Transcript of New Orleans Mayor Landrieu’s address on Confederate monuments

Just hours before workers removed a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee — the fourth Confederate monument to be dismantled in New Orleans in recent weeks — Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave a special address at historic Gallier Hall.

Here’s a full transcript of Landrieu’s remarks:

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way – for both good and for ill.

It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans: the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Color, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of Francexii and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.

You see: New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures.

There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum — out of many we are one.

But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.

America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.

So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.

And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.

So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it. For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.

As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”

So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other.

So, let’s start with the facts.

The historic record is clear: the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.

First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy.

It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.

These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.

After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.

Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy.

He said in his now famous ‘Cornerstone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears, I want to try to gently peel from your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us and make straight a wrong turn we made many years ago so we can more closely connect with integrity to the founding principles of our nation and forge a clearer and straighter path toward a better city and more perfect union.

Last year, President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments about the need to contextualize and remember all of our history. He recalled a piece of stone, a slave auction block engraved with a marker commemorating a single moment in 1830 when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood and spoke from it.

President Obama said, “Consider what this artifact tells us about history … on a stone where day after day for years, men and women … bound and bought and sold and bid like cattle on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. For a long time the only thing we considered important, the singular thing we once chose to commemorate as history with a plaque were the unmemorable speeches of two powerful men.”

A piece of stone – one stone. Both stories were history. One story told. One story forgotten or maybe even purposefully ignored.

As clear as it is for me today … for a long time, even though I grew up in one of New Orleans’ most diverse neighborhoods, even with my family’s long proud history of fighting for civil rights … I must have passed by those monuments a million times without giving them a second thought.

So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race. I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes.

Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it?

Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too?

We all know the answer to these very simple questions.

When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can’t walk away from this truth.

And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.

This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and, most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong.

Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division, and yes, with violence.

To literally put the confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future.

History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.

And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African Americans — or anyone else — to drive by property that they own; occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd.

Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place.

Here is the essential truth: we are better together than we are apart. Indivisibility is our essence. Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world?

We radiate beauty and grace in our food, in our music, in our architecture, in our joy of life, in our celebration of death; in everything that we do. We gave the world this funky thing called jazz; the most uniquely American art form that is developed across the ages from different cultures.

Think about second lines, think about Mardi Gras, think about muffaletta, think about the Saints, gumbo, red beans and rice. By God, just think. All we hold dear is created by throwing everything in the pot; creating, producing something better; everything a product of our historic diversity.

We are proof that out of many we are one — and better for it! Out of many we are one — and we really do love it!

And yet, we still seem to find so many excuses for not doing the right thing. Again, remember President Bush’s words, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”

We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other. We justify our silence and inaction by manufacturing noble causes that marinate in historical denial. We still find a way to say “wait, not so fast.”

But like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “wait has almost always meant never.”

We can’t wait any longer. We need to change. And we need to change now. No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well. If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain.

While some have driven by these monuments every day and either revered their beauty or failed to see them at all, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans see them very clearly. Many are painfully aware of the long shadows their presence casts, not only literally but figuratively. And they clearly receive the message that the Confederacy and the cult of the lost cause intended to deliver.

Earlier this week, as the cult of the lost cause statue of P.G.T Beauregard came down, world renowned musician Terence Blanchard stood watch, his wife Robin and their two beautiful daughters at their side.

Terence went to a high school on the edge of City Park named after one of America’s greatest heroes and patriots, John F. Kennedy. But to get there he had to pass by this monument to a man who fought to deny him his humanity.

He said, “I’ve never looked at them as a source of pride … it’s always made me feel as if they were put there by people who don’t respect us. This is something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It’s a sign that the world is changing.”

Yes, Terence, it is, and it is long overdue.

Now is the time to send a new message to the next generation of New Orleanians who can follow in Terence and Robin’s remarkable footsteps.

A message about the future, about the next 300 years and beyond; let us not miss this opportunity New Orleans and let us help the rest of the country do the same. Because now is the time for choosing. Now is the time to actually make this the City we always should have been, had we gotten it right in the first place.

We should stop for a moment and ask ourselves — at this point in our history, after Katrina, after Rita, after Ike, after Gustav, after the national recession, after the BP oil catastrophe and after the tornado — if presented with the opportunity to build monuments that told our story or to curate these particular spaces … would these monuments be what we want the world to see? Is this really our story?

We have not erased history; we are becoming part of the city’s history by righting the wrong image these monuments represent and crafting a better, more complete future for all our children and for future generations.

And unlike when these Confederate monuments were first erected as symbols of white supremacy, we now have a chance to create not only new symbols, but to do it together, as one people.

In our blessed land we all come to the table of democracy as equals.

We have to reaffirm our commitment to a future where each citizen is guaranteed the uniquely American gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That is what really makes America great and today it is more important than ever to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one. That is why today we reclaim these spaces for the United States of America.

Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all, not some. We all are part of one nation, all pledging allegiance to one flag, the flag of the United States of America. And New Orleanians are in, all of the way.

It is in this union and in this truth that real patriotism is rooted and flourishes.

Instead of revering a 4-year brief historical aberration that was called the Confederacy we can celebrate all 300 years of our rich, diverse history as a place named New Orleans and set the tone for the next 300 years.

After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration. After public hearings and approvals from three separate community led commissions. After two robust public hearings and a 6-1 vote by the duly elected New Orleans City Council. After review by 13 different federal and state judges. The full weight of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government has been brought to bear and the monuments in accordance with the law have been removed.

So now is the time to come together and heal and focus on our larger task. Not only building new symbols, but making this city a beautiful manifestation of what is possible and what we as a people can become.

Let us remember what the once exiled, imprisoned and now universally loved Nelson Mandela and what he said after the fall of apartheid. “If the pain has often been unbearable and the revelations shocking to all of us, it is because they indeed bring us the beginnings of a common understanding of what happened and a steady restoration of the nation’s humanity.”

So before we part let us again state the truth clearly.

The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered.

As a community, we must recognize the significance of removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments. It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history. Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul-searching a truly lost cause.

Anything less would fall short of the immortal words of our greatest President Abraham Lincoln, who with an open heart and clarity of purpose calls on us today to unite as one people when he said:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to do all which may achieve and cherish: a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Here is an example of a monument in Hamburg Germany. It was originally celebrating WW1 (“to remember the fallen and to remind common generations to follow their heroic example”) and was later re-purposed to remind of the atrocities of WW1 and WW2 by adding contrasting images of victims to the heroic warriors: http://denkmalhamburg.de/kriegerdenkmal-an-der-st-johanniskirche/

I THINK YOU MISSED THE ENTIRE POINT. DID YOU NOT HEAR THE WORDS “MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER” COUNTLESS TIMES IN THIS SPEECH? HONOR THE PAST, LEARN/CHANGE FROM IT, AND MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER. IF THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS FEEL THE NEED TO ERECT MONUMENTS TO THE MANY WHO SUFFERED UNDER CONFEDERACY/SOUTHERN WAYS, DO IT WITH A MISSION TO MOVE ALL NEW ORLEANS RESIDENTS FORWARD, NOT INTO THE PAST.

Agreed,and another example to show them that they need to move forward as a nation was when President Abraham Lincoln sent this message
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to do all which may achieve and cherish: a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”. Which basically tells us to come together, unite as one, and to look towards the Future.

Burma perhaps you missed paragraph 6: “…why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame…” monuments to the oppressed are certainly on point.
p.s. please lose the juvenile caps.

This is just so hypocritical. The reason these statues are being taken down is because the Confederacy represents secession, not slavery. By that rational all statues of U.S. Grant (a slave owner throughout the entire war) and Lincoln (Mary Todd Lincoln owned slaves) should also be taken down. Lincoln himself was a blatant racist and white supremacist so should the Lincoln Memorial be destroyed? Jefferson and Washington owned slaves so we should tear down Monticello and the Washington Monument? Besides that all of these people who so self-righteously condemn African slavery fully endorse the enslavement of innocent animals – helpless victims who are tortured and slaughtered everyday by the millions for worthless products we don’t even need. It’s just the same bigotry as racism.

Changing the topic to what you want it to be is fun, but it is not actually useful.

The key point here is that the statues were erected to promote white supremacy (read the inscriptions on the statues) as well as to commemorate the Confederacy, which was set up, by all contemporaneous accounts, to promote, protect, and defend a white slaver society.

It’s in all the secession documents.

It’s in the “Cornerstone speech” mentioned by Mayor Landrieu.

It’s mentioned by the designer of the first Confederate National Flag.

I agree with most of what you have written here, Stephen, but don’t be baited to move your position too far. If you say that slavery was an integral part of the causes of the Civil War, and that slavery was (is) dehumanizing, and even that to justify slavery, many wealthy white folks resorted to white supremacy/black inferiority positions; I am with you.

If, however, you are saying any of these I disagree:

(1) Slavery in and of itself was the primary cause of the Civil War; slavery as philosophical principle without regard for its economic benefits and preservation of the (unjust) structural inequities supporting the White plantation way of life;

(2) The main reason the Southern states seceded was because they hated people of color and wanted to punish them, and the Northern states would not allow this;

(3) The Civil War was simple in its development and the conflicts between the North and South began with, and consisted mainly about, slavery;

(4) People in the North were less biased or hateful towards people of color than were people in the South;

(5) The North’s political will was firmly anti-slave, while the South’s political will was uniformly pro-slave;

(6) Fighting for, or supporting the Southern states during the attempted secession makes you more of a bigot than fighting for the Northers states;

(7) Being a leader in the South means you were an unprincipled man (gender bias intentional);

(8) Lincoln’s primary purpose in sending federal troops to fight against the secession was to emancipate slaves, so that if it weren’t for slavery he would have allowed the Southern states to secede, but they would have no motivation to do so;

(9) Fighting for the South meant you were a traitor because your oaths to your State were generally seen as less important than your oaths to the Federal government, North or South;

(10) All the Northern presidents before and after Lincoln were abolitionists, while all the Southern presidents supported slavery;

The Civil war was complex. Its roots lie in the Revolutionary War, and were continued in the War of 1812. Slavery would not have continued in the South for certainly 50 years, and perhaps even for 20 if these other factors had not been present. One big difference between the Northern orators and the Southern is their location on the Federalism/Nationalism spectrum. Buchanan was a Northern President who supported slavery, tried to please everyone, and probably was one of the biggest reasons the country was on the brink of war even before Lincoln was elected.

None of this excuses slavery, nor does it suggest in any way that we should minimize the harm and injustice done to people of color in all of North America and Western Europe. The powerful enslaved the less powerful.

The problem with the statues and the continuation of the pro-Civil war Southern rhetoric is not that these individuals were any better or worse than any particular leader from the North, but rather that they serve as a continuing painful reminder of the past injustices to many people of color (and others), and can contribute to inhibiting our efforts to come to grips with real problems of race relationships and systemic wealth disparity within our Republic today.

By continuing to argue about slavery, we risk both hardening Southern hearts against their neighbors today and of hiding what are our real and present problems tearing our nation apart right now. The largest injustice to people of color is not primarily that of slavery–it is the huge injustice still present today.

I was able to find more time to reply. Please understand that I am replying to your arguments and not to you. If I slip into anyting that appears to be a personal attack, please do correct me.

I agree with most of what you have written here, Stephen, but don’t be baited to move your position too far. If you say that slavery was an integral part of the causes of the Civil War, and that slavery was (is) dehumanizing, and even that to justify slavery, many wealthy white folks resorted to white supremacy/black inferiority positions; I am with you.

If, however, you are saying any of these I disagree:

(1) Slavery in and of itself was the primary cause of the Civil War; I disagree. Black chattel slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil War (ACW) in this fact: there would be no southern rebellion without slaver states attempting for decades prior to the ACW to enforce the acceptance of slavery upon all America, and without slaver states beginning their formal secession even prior to Lincoln’s inauguration. The Union returned fire from Fort Sumter by going all-in to re-capture the treasonous states. There would be no ACW had slavery not been the underlying principle of the Southern economy. Did the North declare that the extirpation of black chattel slavery was the primary reason for the battle, at any time? Not to my knowledge. I think that even at the end, it was “Union Forever, Hurrah boys, hurrah! Down with the traitors, up with the stars!” – and note the plural form: it was to re-assert the principle of federalism and unionisms. When the traitorous state governments were overthrown and the new Unionist governments were installed, the rebellious states were rejoined to the Union.

slavery as philosophical principle without regard for its economic benefits and preservation of the (unjust) structural inequities supporting the White plantation way of life

Not sure what you are arguing here. That the South was uniquely founded on the principle of white supremacy and the eternal bondage of innocent black Africans to work and labor and die for the profit of white slavers and the society that benefited from black chattel slavery? Well, yes, I agree. I don’t use “plantation,” however. I use “forced labor camp and prison,” because I won’t whitewash what happened.

(2) The main reason the Southern states seceded was because they hated people of color and wanted to punish them, and the Northern states would not allow this;

If I have ever said this, I was wrong. If I have ever implied this, I was unclear.

It is utterly irrelevant whether Southern states (and I think you mean, the white people of the Southern states) “hated” people of color or wanted to punish them. There are plenty of mixed race babies from the 400 years of white supremacy. Many famous people, including Thomas Jefferson, loved their slaves and had multiple children by them. Children they put right into slavery, of course. “Love” and “hate” are not useful here. Actions are.

I don’t think the Northern states would not “allow” the South to be hateful towards black Africans. The primary focus of the political and economic North was to keep the Union. The moralistic underpinnings of the ACW according to the North only slowly became tied to abolitionism, even though there was a tiny minority declaring the immorality of black chattel slavery. John Brown and Nat Turner didn’t start the war with their moralistic cries about the wickedness of black chattel slavery and a white slaver society. South Carolina did that by trying to break up the Union.

(3) The Civil War was simple in its development and the conflicts between the North and South began with, and consisted mainly about, slavery;

Your word “simple” is doing a lot of work here. Social structures are complex because people are complex. Many things tie people together in communities and governments and states and nations. There were conflicts between various factions, North and South, Slaver and Free. Heck, people are complex: Jefferson and Madison and Washington could make various grand statements about human freedom and dignity and own slaves. Occasionally they might write something like “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever,” and be in the position of raping his black property, as did Jefferson.

But absent white supremacy, a white slaver society and economy, and the very real fact of black chattel slavery, there would never be an American Civil War. There would have been no passionate defense of secondary issues. “Tariffs” and “states’ rights” would have simply been arguments that would lead to negotiations and perhaps even some resolutions.

The underlying principle of two systems under one house fighting against each other for their essentialism was the cause, and when the South, by reason of South Carolina’s foolish bombardment of Fort Sumter, threw its lot in with the rebels, the two-system government was replaced by a one-system government, and the underlying principle for the two-system government was black chattel slavery and white slavers.

(4) People in the North were less biased or hateful towards people of color than were people in the South;

Again, I am not arguing this. There were many race riots in the North. In 1741 New York City burned alive black Americans and hung others because of the rumors of a black American rebellion against white supremacy in the North. There is no implication that the North was “good” and the South was “bad.”

There is the direct statement that a government that attempts to enforce and elevate white slavers and white supremacy, however, is wicked. Always.

The North was not then, and is not now, simon-pure in its motivations and actions. The American colonies used black chattel slaves stolen from Africa for their profit and expansion.

The North, however, was simply freer to abandon its reliance upon legal slavery. Not free of all evil.

(5) The North’s political will was firmly anti-slave, while the South’s political will was uniformly pro-slave;

No one I know, and not I, argues that the North was pure in one direction and the South pure in another. There were many loyalists and Unionists in the South who were not consulted regarding the rebellion, and who were later hounded, attacked, and killed for their support of Unionism and even freedom for black human beings. (There was a colony of German Americans in Texas, for example, that was attacked and some killed because they attempted to resist the slaver rebellion.)

The argument isn’t that the North was pure in its motives. The argument is that the North was Unionist and gradually incorporated the extirpation of black chattel slavery. (The three Civil War Amendments were passed largely by the North which required their state legislatures to approve the amendments, leading to my belief that the North at least acknowledged that black chattel slavery and black disenfranchisement was wrong, even though they were still sympathetic to white supremacy.)

(6) Fighting for, or supporting the Southern states during the attempted secession makes you more of a bigot than fighting for the Northers states;

This isn’t a useful argument. The claim is that fighting for the Southern rebellion means fighting to support the Southern rebellion, a rebellion based upon white supremacy, white slavers running the political and economic (and even spiritual) systems), and the eternal enslavement of black Africans here in America since the very beginnings of the American colonies. There might be people with high-minded principles, but those principles were not the reasons for the rebellion, and those high-minded principles were not embodied in the governments and the Constitution and secession documents of the Southern states. Slavery was the underlying principle.

(7) Being a leader in the South means you were an unprincipled man (gender bias intentional);

“Unprincipled” implies “not acting according to your principles,” no? They were not doing that. They were, in my opinion, showing their true principles. In my own church (Southern Presbyterian), grown-ass men with degrees in theology and influential pulpits and podiums used my Jesus Christ to defend not just black chattel slavery, but also the extension of black chattel slavery into free states, because they though Jesus and God would be honored by that slavery.

Unprincipled? No, not at all.

Just hiding their principles behind a thin veneer of smooth words and polite actions.

(8) Lincoln’s primary purpose in sending federal troops to fight against the secession was to emancipate slaves, so that if it weren’t for slavery he would have allowed the Southern states to secede, but they would have no motivation to do so;

Lincoln never, to my knowledge, stated such a thing, and I do not know of any careful scholar who asserts that as a motive. Lincoln’s primary purpose was to enforce the federal Constitution against the treasonous state governments. As he stated at least once, if he could restore the Union by supporting slavery, he would have done it; it was his growing awareness that Union could not be a Union with white slavers and white slaver labor camps that led him to also work towards the freedom of owned human beings.

(9) Fighting for the South meant you were a traitor because your oaths to your State were generally seen as less important than your oaths to the Federal government, North or South;

Fighting for the Southern rebels against the lawful authority of the federal Constitution was treason, yes, especially to military men who received their federal commissions by swearing to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

Their estimations of their oaths and their commitment to the federal Constitution were flawed, and I can’t honor them in their imprecise understanding. They fought to start and maintain a war that ended up killing 500,000 men in battle and countless civilians, fought to keep their black human brothers and sisters in chains, fought to protect a Confederate government whose Constitution forbade freedom for any black chattel slaves.

That is what they swore to when they swore to break their oaths to the federal Constitution and took up arms against the United States.

I’ll leave it to mind-readers to determine what they were thinking. I look at their actions and read their words.

(10) All the Northern presidents before and after Lincoln were abolitionists, while all the Southern presidents supported slavery;

I’m not sure if you mean “federal presidents from Northern states as compared to federal presidents from Southern states,” because Jeff Davis was the only president of the CSA that I know of.

That our antebellum Presidents included slavers is not arguable. The first six were, and several others after them. Many people in federal power from the founding of the United States, from 1789 through 1865, were white slavers, North and South.

Absent the fact that white slavers were included as our national leaders, including Presidents, I’m not sure what the point of this argument is.

The Civil [W]ar was complex. Its roots lie in the Revolutionary War, and were continued in the War of 1812.

This is interesting, but the point is what, exactly?

Slavery would not have continued in the South for certainly 50 years, and perhaps even for 20 if these other factors had not been present.

Flat-out false as an assertion, and unknowable. This is pretense. The white slavers of the South were looking to extend black chattel slavery across the Southwest and into Mexico, Caribbean states, Central America, and even South America.

Black chattel slavery was profitable. Period. Those who profited from that enslavement sought to increase their profit. It was not going to die out on its own, any more than a plague will die out on its own. A plague dies out when the infected people die. A system of profitable black chattel slavery dies out when the white slavers no longer can profit OR literally die out. And there is no sign that a profitable business was going to die out in the New World. Other nations kept black chattel slavery going for decades longer, and absent the rebellions of Haiti and the United States, there isn’t much reason to believe that shame, moral principle, or economic forces would cause black chattel slavery to die out.

One big difference between the Northern orators and the Southern is their location on the Federalism/Nationalism spectrum.

Not sure what this means.

Buchanan was a Northern President who supported slavery, tried to please everyone, and probably was one of the biggest reasons the country was on the brink of war even before Lincoln was elected.

It’s irrelevant whether Buchanan was supporting slavery if the white slavers of the South were actual slave-owners who wanted rebellion. Buchanan is as much the “cause” of the rebellion as is a feisty woman the “cause” of her beatings by her husband. The biggest reason for the rebellion of the Southern states was the actions of the Southern states.

None of this excuses slavery.

Correct. Nothing excuses slavery.

nor does it suggest in any way that we should minimize the harm and injustice done to people of color in all of North America and Western Europe.

WTF bringing in Western Europe? Do you know that in Western Europe there were freed black men and women as part of the social and economic structure? This is just bizarre.

The powerful enslaved the less powerful.

This is a truism. I’m not even sure why you bring it up. OF COURSE the powerful can enslave the powerless. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO DO SO. The power they have is direct, given that they have tools and guns and economics, BUT they also have that power because their society willingly allows it as a necessary and even moral thing. We don’t think that robbing banks is a moral good, so we generally frown upon bank robbers and allow them to be imprisoned. We are less certain that environmental protection is a moral good, so we are less willing to see environmental destroyers be free to wreak havoc upon our environment, and are less willing to see them fined or even imprisoned for the far greater damage they cause than bank robbers who escape with a few thousand dollars in marked bills.

White slavers and the system of Southern slave-labor camps would not exist without the principle of white supremacy as the raison d’être of the South, even though white supremacy was also firmly a principle of the North. The North simple did not have as many enslaved people, did not have as many slave-labor camps, did not have as many leaders arguing vociferously for the principle of black enslavement and white profit.

The problem with the statues and the continuation of the pro-Civil [W]ar Southern rhetoric is not that these individuals were any better or worse than any particular leader from the North, but rather that they serve as a continuing painful reminder of the past injustices to many people of color (and others), and can contribute to inhibiting our efforts to come to grips with real problems of race relationships and systemic wealth disparity within our Republic today.

I’m not sure what you mean here, and I mean this honestly. A failed rebellion that is misremembered with fake history serves no one well, and I agree with you if that is what you mean. “A painful reminder” that cannot be discussed honestly, however, is a scab that continues to be ripped off before the healing can take place.

We need honest, frank, even brutal discussions about our past, not to blame the present and induce guild and shame, but in order to let go of the hold the imagined past has on so many people who think that their essential personhood is identified with that imagined past.

It’s sick and wrong for anyone to defend the South and Southern white supremacy and Southern white slavers and slave-labor camps.

We can look at things that come from the idea of the South, such as graciousness and hospitality and friendliness. There is a charm about Southern social structures that can, in their best examples, serve to remind us that people are more important than profits, that sincerity is more important than success, that accommodation can lead to great comfort.

I just cannot accept, however, that we have to lie about our past in order to placate people who will not give up their lies about the past.

These are grown adults we are talking about. We do not serve them well by enabling their pretenses.

By continuing to argue about slavery, we risk both hardening Southern hearts against their neighbors today and of hiding what are our real and present problems tearing our nation apart right now.

This is precisely what is wrong here. We are abandoning the field of battle because we would rather protect the feelings of our opponents than protect the human dignity and human worth of those we support. I do not care, one whit, for the “hearts” of people who work to oppose and harm my friends and family and neighbors and co-workers if they are black or gay or Muslim or female or transgender or Latino or disabled or old or sick or poor.

I am more than willing to reject their arguments, confound their plans, and disrupt their efforts. If they wish to hold on to a failed rebellion and a false history, I will make no effort to accommodate their warped perspectives or comfort them when they are aggrieved at rejection and refutation.

The largest injustice to people of color is not primarily that of slavery–it is the huge injustice still present today.

This is both a-historical and perverted.

A-historical in that the largest injustices (plural) to our fellow humans who are “people of color” stems because of our long, long history of white supremacy coupled with our refusal to examine our history and present which is based upon white supremacy. Attempting to excuse the past and start de novo is convenient to us who are white Christian Americans, but it is a lie. We are who we are and we are where we are because of the many, many decades of breaking the bodies and stealing the labor of our fellow humans whom we dehumanize and subjugate as “worthy of slavery” or “worthy of neglect.”

South Africa, in my opinion, has a similarly troubled and turbulent past, with many examples of wickedness and harm. And they have attempted to heal that by their Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It has not led to a perfect re-balancing of South African lives and justice. In some cases, in order to reach some conclusions they had to let known criminals off because those criminals were able to reveal the wicked actions of others.

But it is a declaration by South Africa that they are willing to dive into their past and open up all their history for display, as much as possible.

We should do the same thing here. It will be hard. Very hard. I would hazard most white Americans could not handle what we will need to do.

But we must decide what we need to do before we decide that we will do it. Until we are willing to do all the hard things, we will continually excuse, in my opinion, the very wicked past of America and the very wicked actions of the present that occur from the past because we do not want to do the very difficult work of being honest.

It is perverted that we must attempt to assuage the feelings of the inheritors of white supremacy’s accomplishments. We do not shut down the victims of robbery because we want to respect the tender hearts of the thief. We do not shut down the victims of a church bombing because it will result in fewer opportunities for laundromats to get sheets their very whitest.

We should not shut down the very real, very necessary discussions we must have about American racism and white supremacy, exemplified by the white slaver society of the Confederacy but not limited to that.

There is literally no reason to do so, and there is the very real danger we will continue to live in a nation that must cosset its lies while rejecting its truth.

The Romans said it earlier (and I can’t find my Latin phrasebook), that we must do what is right even though it bring down all that we hold dear.

If the cost of telling the truth is that we will have bad feelings or even resistance—then let’s just admit that truth is not our highest value.

Thanks you Roy Gathercoal. The information you give for the reasons is educational. Some of which I knew and some I did not.
Do you also agree that after the civil was was over, the lynching of freed slaves began in earnest. The south, or many southerns were terrified of blacks gaining their freedom. They began to demonize the men and attribute overtly sexual behavior to black women. So while the Civil war had many causes, the south showed their true feelings for many years to come. In reality the the practices did not end until the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. One hundred years after the end of the war?

Dear Paul Deeb, Your statement: “The reason these statues are being taken down is because the Confederacy represents secession…” is very interesting. Can you please tell me where I can find any proof of this? This will be a big help, thank you!

you can come up with any justification for a racism but you will not change the fact that confederacy represent Slavery.
You are a racist and that clearly shows in your email. in a context of Slavery nothing is important

Paul Deeb, here’s a simple solution. Ask the people affected by the prejudice, the Black people of our country, if THEY want the statues? How can you fail to recognize the insanity associated to the Confederacy?

Absolutely Agree Paul, Those that win the war write the history, I would suppose that everybody believes everything the government days now..Right.. Seriously ..This fine America never covers up…Need I also say No Confederate Ship brought nin slaves..that my fine people were American Ships under the fine stars and strips ..

This is a rather disingenuous reply, as the importation of slaves was banned in 1808, the *earliest* date possible, because slavery and the importation of slaves was Constitutionally protected for 20 years after the signing of the Constitution–in fact, the only part of the Constitution that could not be amended was this part, protecting black chattel slavery by white slavers.

The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that stated that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.

No one says that the United States, plural, wasn’t permissive of slavery. Some of the northern states in the Union didn’t actually ban slavery until later in the mid 1800s.

But the key is that the Civil War was a war initiated by the southern rebellious states, states that attempted to break apart the Union. Lincoln, acting in his Constitutional duties to ensure a “republican form of government,” lawfully sent Union soldiers to put down an illegal rebellion.

The Confederacy attempted to compel eternal black chattel slavery, and seeing that Lincoln and the Republicans would no longer protect slavery in the United States, attempted to break away from federal control.

There were no other grand reasons. It was black chattel slavery and white slavers, forever, in their view.

The Union forces were sent into various states of the United States to put down the rebellion.

After five hard years of battle, the Union prevailed, and eventually the rebellious states were restored to their role in the United States government.

Too bad all the sacrifices of the 650,000 dead in the Civil War were tossed aside in 1876, but that’s a separate story.

Agree totally. And I know the shift in awareness of what will be known, as the biggest atrociousness and horrifying human actions, will end the era of animal consumption. It will end the rape, confinement, mutilation, torture, and violet murder of innocent beings. And I doubt that the heads of the meat industry will have statues erected in a fictitious memory of “when humans used to eat animals”….

Your relative’s greatest contribution was providing a life line for you. Put his sins aside, they are not yours to reconcile or feel anything about. Thank him for your life. We are all imperfect creatures. Be blessed

We are supposed to learn one new thing every day, according to Sister Mary Pierre, a teacher I had in grade school. I applied that lesson to my vocabulary. Today my word is Edifying and I thank you for posting it.

My 3rd Great Grandfather was a confederate soldier, I am African American. I recently found a picture of him, my 3rd Great Grandmother, their children and Grandchildren. When I look at the picture and read the story that they wanted to marry, but Alabama didn’t allow interracial marriage, and they stayed together until death, I sat puzzled. Who is this man that fought on the wrong side, stayed with his black companion for life, and raised and provided for all of his biracial children and grandchildren? I had to say he is/was my grandfather!
My final thought is this, I was not alive then, I didn’t live in his brain, and I don’t know his reasoning, but because of him I’m alive, share a heritage with his ancestors of England, and deep within my genes there’s a part of him redeemed.

As a Lenni Lenape (Delaware) I want all statues of Custer, Jackson, Sherman, Buffalo Soldiers, and anything else that glorifies the murder of millions of Indigenous people of thofnow called Americas. This would include the American flag.

The war between the states was fought over tariffs and as usual money not because they owned slaves. I do not agree that any human be a slave but so many think that it was for slavery. The fact that Lincoln abolished slavery is the only good thing to come out of the war.

K. Kissick, you will believe what you will, but if you read the State proclamations of secession, especially Mississippi’s, it is hard to maintain your position, that slavery was not factor in what started the war. Tariffs and State’s Rights are also subsidiary reasons for the war, but slavery was the main point of secession.

Lincoln only issued the Emancipation Proclamation after the war was ongoing for 2 years. If you read the document, you will find that only slaves in the south were freed. He said the rebellious states, the CSA, were to free their slaves. If we are to address the truth, let us address the whole truth. Slavery was and is wrong. But, it was just as wrong in Pennsylvania as in Louisiana. Yet it remained legal in PA even after the war ended.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. (https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html)

While what you say is technically true, Congress passed the Amendment before the Civil War was ended, so it is a very very simplistic reading of the events to say “slavery was legal in PA at the end of the Civil War.”

Everyone knew it was on its way out.

And Pennsylvania ratified it before the end of the Civil War.

“The Thirteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution on December 6, 1865, based on the following ratifications:

Slavery was outlawed in 1780 and by the outbreak of the Civil War there were no slaves in PA. That being said, there should be no sugarcoating or whitewashing of history anywhere and that most certainly includes in the North. At some point we all have to put down our defenses and really listen to our neighbors and try to find some compassion within us.

As a footnote, it was the many (c. 60,000 or so?) slaves in Kentucky and a few in Delaware who were not free at the end of the Civil War. Since those states had sided with the north, they were allowed to keep their slaves. They were only freed c. mid December 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment went into effect.

Considering that the Declarations of Secession for the confederate states AND the words of those forming their fledgling government said the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you’re claiming, I think you’re buying into the very revisionist history this speech is talking about.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”

So you were actually present & fought in the Civil War? You seem awfully sure of yourself to be speaking on behalf of a people you never knew. Or are you simply stating an ignorant & misinformed opinion?

All my male ancestors fought in Civil War and all of them had slaves. I’m not so far removed from their stories I know what they fought for. It was for their ;’way of life’. Slaves. Money. Having the largest plantation. Never states rights. My grandfather grew up knowing them. I heard it all from him although he didn’t know what all was wrong with it. He had tenate farmers so blacks and poor whites weren’t really free to get ahead.

And then compare it to the source documents — the secession declarations, the “Cornerstone” speech, the creator of the first Confederate National Flag — to see what contemporary rebels said the reasons were.

Hint.

the main reason, mentioned everywhere, is slavery and white supremacy.

So, do you think the free black slave owners that owned 28% of black slaves in New Orleans were also about white supremacy? Your post is 100% misguided, and proves why tearing down and trying to re-invent history will only lead to it’s repetition.

Yes, indeed, it’s still about white supremacy and white slavers. NO ONE has said there were no members of other races who were slavers. That is a fact of history.

The vast majority of slavers were white slavers. That is white supremacy in action.

Also, as part of white supremacy that allowed any and all to own slaves legally: how many white chattel slaves were there? How many white people were enslaved at birth by nature of their whiteness (not the “one-drop rule” that determined blackness and enslavement)?

The Civil War was fought over slavery. That’s the truth. Anyone who wants to ignore that or talk about tariff’s or state’s rights is wrong. It’s a self-protective lie so you don’t have to deal with the ugly and violent reality. As the mayor said right there in his speech about the vice president of the Confederacy proclaiming:

“cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Most of the Confederate states either publicly proclaimed something similar or had something like it written into their constitutions.
Texas: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world … a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

You’re wrong. The overwhelming main reason for the Civil War was slavery, and whether it was to be allowed in new states as the U.S. grew westward. Apologists for the South repeatedly claim tariffs, states’ rights, blah blah blah as the “main” causes of the war, but it was mainly about slavery.

Slavery was not a Cause for the War of Mister Lincoln’s Taxes and Tariffs. Slavery was not a Reason Mister Lincoln’s War of the Evil Northern Empire occurred. The War for Southern Independence, also known as the War of Yankee Aggression, was solely caused by a vengeful Hatred of the peaceful agrarian South who loved the Republic of George Washington, Patriotism, States’ Rights/Federalism, and local self-government and Libertarianism/Laissez-faire Capitalism/Objectivism. Secession was about as much about as protecting Slavery as was unfair Taxes and Tariffs that funded damn Yankee socialism and the Marxists in Mister Lincoln’s Government and did NOTHING for the Holy Land/South. The South funded eighty-six percent of the Revenue for the damn Yankee Government that Patriots like President Davis, Vice-President Stephens, General Lee, General Jackson, General Forrest, General Longstreet, and General Johnston (both of them) fought for to protect until the damn Yankees decided to stick it to the South for cultural and social Bigotry and vile Hatred of a Southern Way of Life. Slavery existed in five Yankee States, and Mister Lincoln used Slave Labour to build the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building. Over three hundred twenty-thousand damn Yankee “Soldiers” – and I use the Term loosely since they acted more like Vagabonds, Rapists, Murderers, Arsonists, and genocidal Maniacs worse than the Nazis and Facists in the Holocaust – owned Slaves or had Family that owned Slaves up North. The South could have protected Slavery forever by passing Mister Lincoln’s original Thirteenth Amendment, but since Secession was not solely about Slavery, the South rejected protecting Slavery forever, knowing it was doomed in about twenty Years anyway. The South wanted to keep it Rights to self-determination, religious Liberty, right to protect themselves from a damn Yankee Invasion much like when the Nazis invaded the French Republic, and right to acquire property legally. Federalism versus Fascism. Lincoln was NEVER the Southern States’ President. President Jefferson Finis Davis was. GOD SAVE THE SOUTH: THE HOLY LAND!

You’re pulling our chain…… right? This isn’t serious? You got me – I’m laughing. Can you type the word ‘Yankee’ without typing the word ‘damn’ first? Too funny – thanks for a good laugh. I knew no-one could really be this moronic in 2017.

Absolutely false. How could “states rights” have divided the states and led to a war? ALL states wanted to defend their rights from the federal government–that’s what the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were careful to stipulate. This was a concern they shared, not fought over. The only “right” that the Southern States valued, and which the North did not, was the right to allow slavery. It was, and still is, a Lost Cause. No amount of alternative facts or fake news will change that.

You’re in denial K Kissick. The Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” -Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy

Kissick please take the time to read the Declarations of Secession, especially Mississippi’s, and educate yourself. You will find that you have been lied to. It’s not your fault. “The truth shall set you free”.

It is totally his fault. People drop duh-quotes right in front of him, including directly from the article itself and he just cuts and pastes the same old drivel about tariffs without so much as a peep about the evidence laid out for him. Half the people in this country decide what they believe first and then ignore any and all inconvenient facts that get in the way of those beliefs.

They act like they’re in a cult. It doesn’t matter how many books have been written on the subject or how many West Point historians directly contradict the idea, they won’t allow an ounce of shame to besmirch their invented history because they are children masquerading as adults; completely incapable of introspection and bereft of intellectual integrity.

But they are just self-aware enough to suspect a proud history that’s really a lie is all they really have to be proud of and that is why they will never let go of the idea that slavery was an ancillary issue in the civil war and that a proud and noble South was somehow wronged by the North for forcing an end to the perpetration of one of the greatest crimes against humanity in human history.

Yes, there were other interests in the civil war. There always are in any war. But anybody who believes it would have happened without the abolitionist movement in full swing is delusional. Self-denial is baked into the very cultural fabric of the south. Slavery wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

It was all about Slavery but you are half right because Slavery was all about money. The north’s problem with Slavery was about Morality for some but for others in the north it was about progress, They were worried that if we did not modernize the rest of the world would surpass us. Our reliance on slavery was keeping us from modernizing our farming and building. These monuments can be put in Museums. In the end the result was the end of slavery and that is an undisputable good thing.

It would be a fascinating discussion to talk about the impact of black chattel slavery upon the North, directly through enslaved people kept in the North as well as through capital/investments originated in the North.

Still, while it was wicked for the North to profit from white slavery, it was more wicked for white slavers to own people.

Tariffs, taxation were certainly inflammatory issues between the north and south, but to say it was about money and not slaves? How do you think the south became King Cotton and (the rest of the country) accumulated its wealth, fair wages or free enslaved labor?

And aside from an economic standpoint, while about only 1/4 southerners owned slaves, do you think poor whites suddenly wanted enslaved members of society, people who could always be counted upon to be below them, to suddenly be raised to citizens?

Lincoln didn’t free the slaves. The 13th amendment did. The Amancipation proclamation was to keep England out of the war and only freed slaves in confederate states to which he had no control over. Lincoln didn’t free the White House slaves. They were freed with the 13th amendment

K. Kissick perhaps you missed this?
He said in his now famous ‘Cornerstone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth

People who think secession was about anything other than slavery or that the Confederacy was about anything other than the misery of white slavers celebrating their ownership of other humans are ignoring history and creating a pretend one.

I appreciate the mayor’s remarks. I have moved my position on the removal of these statues because of his remarks. Let’s apply these principles to the whole of all processes in America.

Stephen, your statement exposes a wide and deep chasm of ignorance and oversimplification of the complexity of that situation. Yes, there were “white slavers celebrating their ownership of other humans”, but you are “ignoring history and creating a pretend one” to reduce secession to that single issue. You are making the mistake of holding a firm position regarding the whole ball of wax I will label simply as the “Civil War” without including two factors which you cannot ever ignore in considering any war, any where, any time in human history. Those two issues are 1: follow the money; and 2: whoever wins the war, gets to write the history books. Consequently, you have bought into the “monuments to their fantasy” of those, way mostly, but not all, from the North, and have arrived at a place far from the truth regarding the circumstances in the USA in that era, coming to the present.

I grew up ignorant of race-based issues because it was the 50s and the white suburbs.

I’ve had to educate myself about America as being more than a whites-only nation.

It’s hard work.

But all along the way, I am continually both saddened and astonished that ordinary, normal people want to hold on to a past that glorifies the ownership of other people, glorifies in the profit from their bodies, glorifies cruelty and hate and destruction.

I keep thinking “If only I can clear away the nonsense and explain the facts, they’ll be converted.”

But it doesn’t work that way. People hold onto the fantasy of the mossy-oaks-and-mint-julep plantations where nobility reigns and enslaved people work happily and silently in the background.

Try to explain to people that a plantation was a slave-labor camp, and they get all huffy.

Try to explain that the sole reason for the South was black chattel slaves to be the arms and legs and body of the white slavers, and they get offended.

Try to explain that it was the white slavers who were the richest people in all America, and they start coming up with denials and deflections.

We lose nothing by examining the past, as it is.

It is just who we were, and unfortunately, in many ways, who we still are.

But it does not have to be who we will be.

Tearing down statues and monuments to white slavers and enforcers of white supremacy does not erase the past.

The Nazis removed patriotic Statues, Gravestones, Markers, historical Memorials, and religious Monuments too. Mitch Landrieu may be French, but he is acting like the Germans who invaded his pansy Mother Country. I wish the Nazis had taken car of his Ancestors.

This Stephen Matlock caught my eye because he post so much and thinks he knows so much, but in fact is racist and ignorant about the South, The War, and the people of those times. Aw why bother, he is into present-ism, he judges people of another time and place by todays standards; How can he blame slave owners who did what the King told them to; their country USA said it was legal; Their churches said it was NOT a sin; their Bible did not condemn them but told them to be fair and just in their treatment of their slaves and for slaves to give their masters their due. All that began way back in time, and slavery still exist in some parts of the world today. Slavery in the South was better than slavery in the Caribbean, South America and many other places. I wish we never had it at all, and Lincoln seems to be right when he tried to ship them back to Africa; he believed whites and blacks could not live together peaceably. Lincoln and his government did promise to bottle them up in the South, and they did and that was NOT fair to whites or blacks. New Orleans, and Louisiana used to believe in “LIVE AND LET LIVE”, but this mayor and his racist crew decided that blacks and whites who respected their 100 year old monuments could not live with them. He took them down in the dark of night and set them in the midst of the parking lot next to the trash. A pox on his house. Mayor Mitch Landrieu is a lying hypocrite tyrant; NOLA is not just a chocolate city anymore it is a black power activist city.

They passed laws to forbid newspapers from the North preaching abolition from circulating in the South.

Their representatives in Congress forbade debate on the floors of the House and Senate from discussing white slavers.

Their pastors and elders and bishops broke apart churches between North and South because the North insisted that Christians could not righteously own slaves. I’m raised in the Southern Presbyterian Church, and have original documents about this. (Well, copies. I don’t have actual literal paper copies. Those are in archives.)

Their Constitutional endorsers and signatories ensured that the Constitution contained only one unamendable section–that section dealing with white slavers was off-limits from 1789 until 1809.

Thomas Jefferson (one of many Founding Fathers who was a white slaver) said in reference to the slaver nation he had helped found “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

They set up police bands to check the status of black humans continually to ensure that their enslaved people remained enslaved.

They raised militias and possees to go after black humans who attempted to assert their humanity and claim their own freedom.

They beat and robbed and stole from their black chattel slaves their lives and fortunes and sacred honor, and justified it because they had guilty minds.

These are not ignorant people.

They might have tried to pretend, but they knew, they talked about it secretly, they denied it fiercely in public.

But they knew.

Slavery is wicked.

Slavery in the Bible was mentioned ALWAYS as something done by victorious warriors or by victorious governments. You could be enslaved if you/your nation lost a war, or if you/your family failed to pay your debts. The Bible allowed slaves close to freedom to willingly re-enslave themselves if they felt freedom was too risky, but I’m sure we don’t need to talk about that.)

The black Africans stolen and impressed into black chattel slavery were guilty of no crime and were not captured in war.

The entire edifice of religious approval of white American slavers is a fiction, invented by men and women hoping to use God to justify their wickedness.

Stephen Matlock- I was fascinated by your certainty of rightness on an issue that literally thousands of books, many college courses and most historians disagreed over. I went to your blog and originally believing you to be very young was surprised to find you have authored numerous items. I may have inadequate knowledge but the titles of your blog articles simply led me to believe you are an extremely liberal individual with no ability to listen to an opposing viewpoint. I have never actually heard anyone condone slavery of any kind. I am amazed at the hatred the Southern states who succeeded from our Union generate. I am also baffled by the fact that the blame is always laid entirely on whites in the South when American slavery originated with Black Africans themselves who were not the originators of the institution, and by percentage were much less slave owners than Romans or Egyptians.

I appreciate the blog hit. You might be the second or third person this year to read it.

I am not blaming white people. I am blaming white slavers. You should feel entirely disconnected from that blame.

Whether slavery was invented in black Africa or white America is irrelevant, of course. If you raised kids (as I have), you probably never let them excuse their own behavior by comparing it to what Johnny Jones did.

We should be able to look at our past with a clear eye and just say what happened. To say that a thief broke into my house to steal my gold is not to “blame” the thief or somehow crash down on them as an otherwise innocent person.

It is to say that someone who broke into my house to steal my gold is a thief, whether she is caught or not, and whether the amount of gold was great or small.

To say that Americans who bought and used and broke and killed black chattel slaves were slavers isn’t to “blame” them. It is simply to say that what they did describes them.

They were white slavers, who used black bodies to enrich themselves and their own families, and when those black bodies were no longer profitable as-is, they sold them or killed them. (Not every white slaver sold or killed every enslaved human–the point is, that as long as that enslaved human was profitable, they were kept enslaved as property; when that value was no longer apparent, those enslaved humans were disposed of.)

This is something to just speak about, clearly.

The same George Washington we revere as “Father of Our Country” also, while President, attempted to capture an escaped enslaved woman to return her to duty as the maid of his wife.

Both things are true about Geo. Washington. I don’t have to make up a history of unvarnished moral rectitude, and I don’t have to make up a history of pure evil. I can just look at all that Geo. Washington is, and that is who he is. President and White Slaver.

What do you even mean by “slavery as the cause”? Obviously the slave states had slaves and wanted to maintain slavery, but how do you figure that was a cause for secession? And why did the North go to war to prevent them from seceding?

I am quoting from / alluding to the secession documents. The seceding states should explain their reasoning for rebellion, and they did: slavery.

This isn’t hard to understand.

Your second assertion is laughable. The Union (not “the North”) responded to the attack by the rebellious, traitorous state governments who attempted to break up that Union. The war wasn’t against slavery. It was against faithless state government who were attempting to wrest control away from the federal government and the promise of the “republican form of government.”

Lincoln, acting as the chief executive and commander-in-chief, led the battle to preserve the Union. In that cause, he and the rest of the Union gradually also incorporated the destruction of slavery as a legal practice in the United States–all states.

That’s why we have the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Lincoln and others saw that a nation that continued black chattel slavery would always be threatened by disunion, and of course saw the monstrous nature of slavery, so abolitionism *also* became part of the cause.

The initial response by Lincoln, however, was to preserve the Union.

The rebellious states declared that white enslavement of innocent black humans was *their* primary cause.

It was all about slavery. States rights, to continue slavery without the federal government stepping in to create laws that force paying this work force. Tariffs, to continue slavery without penalties. And most white people in the South wanted to keep slavery going. Slaves were the lowest of the low. At least the poorest white people were higher in status than a slave.

To quote from the musical “Hamilton”: A civics lesson from a slaver. Hey neighbor
Your debts are paid cuz you don’t pay for labor
“We plant seeds in the South. We create.”
Yeah, keep ranting
We know who’s really doing the planting

One huge problem with your version of history is that the federal government had no authority to step “in to create laws to force paying this work force,” and Lincoln said exactly that right at the beginning of his first inaugural speech. (“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”) The Constitution protected slavery, and the slave states had an untouchable veto over any constitutional amendments that might have changed it.

The distinction many confederate apologists make between slavery and money when minimizing slavery as the cause of the civil war is a red herring and seeing that for what it is would, I think, go a long way towards pulling some of these folks out of their sugar coated revisionist fantasy land and closer to a more realistic version of what actually happened to turn most of the soith into traitors willing to die rather than remain Americans.

The only true Americans in the 1840’s-present are cultural and ethnic Southrons who were born and raised in the South be they Caucasoid, black African, Hispanic, Native American, or whatever since the Confederate States had all those Races and many religions in their Military Ranks.

Blacks and Whites, Jews and Christians were welcome in the Confederate Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Blacks and Jews, at first, were NOT welcome in the damn Yankee Military and I do not like calling the Northern Forces a Military because they were more like the Barbary Pirates or the German Nazis. And when Jews and Blacks were at long last admitted into the damn Yankee Army, they got inferior Pay, were not allowed to be Officers, and got treated like Scum.

At least Blacks got equal Pay in the Confederate Army and there were Dozens of Jewish Generals in the Confederate Army. It was the Jewish Generals who innovated a Saint George Cross Confederate Battle Flag (they did not like it saying it resembled JESUS CHRIST’s Cross) and said to use the Cross of Saint Andrew since some of the Jews were Celtic and Gaelic.

The Confederate Government in Montgomery originally wanted to call their fledgling Nation the “Republic of George Washington” and wanted their Flag to be the Stars and Stripes with seven Stars and force the apostate damn Yankees to get a new Flag since Mister Lincoln was a social, marxist, communist, Humanist, atheist, Fascist scumbag, anti-semitic Racist who hated Blacks and wanted them shipped to Slave Colonies in Haiti, South America or back to Africa. Even Grant had Legislation introduced into Congress to get this done.

The problem with the it was ALL or ONLY about slavery ignores-TRUTH, virtually no one in the South, less than 5% of the population owned slaves. why did so many die for an institution that deprived them of economic opportunity? That was clearly dying and of which many, many of their neighbors and friends opposed? there was certainly not uniformity of viewpoint about slavery in the South. either they were ALL stupid or there were additional issues. Those of you not having lived in those times, i.e. all of you have no ability to make blanket statements about the “only” reason for the war being slavery. Many young men fought for Virginia, South or North Carolina and their states whether the states were right or wrong about a particular issue that did not matter to them. I guess the large plantation owners who were rich and owned slaves were just fascinating and charming people so NONE of their neighbors were jealous of their wealth and ALL of the South just fell in line dying for these few rich families and THEIR way of live? Fascinating logic. do any of you understand the illogic of your arguments?

First, the declared reasons for secession were centered around black chattel slavery and the demand by white slavers to not only continue their wicked ways, but also to expand it. (There were plans to turn the southern halves of Arizona and New Mexico into slaver-regions, California was threatened, and there was talk of making a white-slaver empire in the Caribbean as well as Central and South America.)

The political and economic masters of the South wanted the white slaver society to continue, and used many methods to appeal to their foot soldiers and their intermediaries–the offer of riches, of success, of status, of honor. There was the cry of “protecting the homeland.” There was the appeal to naked, racist fear of black humans that they would attack and kill pure white Southerners, and especially the fear that freed black males w, tould attack and defile their white women. All these mixed together to engage the South to support the Civil War to an extent that objectors were ostracized and murdered, a vast middle kept quiet enough to survive, and the fire-eaters egged on the South to continue their doomed past.

It is similar to today, where many poor white people who should find common cause with poor black people are instead led by their spiritual, financial, and political leaders to reject and hate their common-bonded fellow countrymen, to side with the very people exploiting them.

Not every Southerner was a direct owner of an enslaved human? This is not a surprise. The male head of household was the owner, even though the entire family benefited. Who was the owner, then? Who benefited? And who benefited by subjugating one phenotype as opposed to the superior phenotype? Why, the superior phenotype.

The secessionist documents all declare slavery as the main issue, even though it was not the sole issue.

Absent black chattel slavery and the enforcement of said situation by white slavers, there is no South, no Civil War, no Confederate surrender, and no Lost Causers.

Thank you for this message. Marc Marshall
5 hrs · Saint Simons Island, GA ·
Remember all the thousands of our ancestors who died in the war of Northern aggression The families torn apart. Families who had worked hard to establish their homes, farms, schools and communities forced to serve. Many lost their homes. Most in the South who survived the war, went on to live in utter poverty. Children not yet old enough, 15, 16, 17 years old never came back. Many died in medical camps of infections and disease. It impacted people of all races and all economic status. Southern elites found their confederate cash was worthless after the war.
Again and again we hear people refer to the war saying it was about slavery. We know it was not. It was about State’s rights vs the power of the federal government. The war ended but the fight did not! We are still fighting today.
The people of New Orleans who removed the statue of Robert E. Lee have impose yet a continuance of the horrors of that war. The degradation of having been subjugated by the Northern aggression took the life out of Southerners. That’s why the statue stood where it did. To give hope for the future of the South. And to remind us of the struggle our ancestors endured so that we may exist today.
I am truly saddened by this act of historical ignorance. shared via James Slater

Very moving. The problem is that it is full of his personal beliefs rather than the truth. So, while you will be happy to tears when you walk past a statue free Lee Circle, I hope you are wearing body armor as you walk from there up into the Lower Garden District to because Mitch L is not going to do a damn thing about the drug dealers Euterpe Street or you getting shot in Coliseum Square Park if you dare to go there as the sun is going down. Aren’t those criminals supposed to feel better now that those dreaded monuments are gone? Of course not. Those monuments are not a symbol of anything and certainly not white supremacy over New Orleans. That’s been gone a long long time.

ACTIONS NOT WORDS are the true measure of a person. Mitch Landreiu’s actions are those of a tyrant;
Why didn’t the people get to vote on this removal of their 100 year historical statues? His words about our ancestors are mean spirited hateful and untrue. New Orleans has the highest crime rate in the USA. He has stressed the budget to the extreme for his own desires. He has allowed outsiders with their own agenda to determine the outcome of our city. He has committed all manner of sins against his family with a black mistress and a new baby. This man has goals to be your next president, pay no mind to what he says, but watch what he does.

History will not be erased simply by taking down a statue. Left alone the statues would simply fade, as everything they stood for wasted away. But now that you’ve taken down that statue, you’ve given every white southerner a desire to preserve their culture by actually believing it. Congratulations, Mr. Landerieu, you’ve just provided the fodder for a new Neo-Confederate movement. God help us.

If we’re supposed to not do the right thing for fear or reactionaries we’d never get anything done. We’re not gonna sit around and be afraid of white backlash. Stop peddling the lie that if we just quietly let racists be racists everything will be ok.

The most racist Americans are black Americans according to black Libertarian Radio Show Host from L.A., Larry Elder. New Orleans is a Road Apple and the murder Capital of America next to Shitcago and Detroit, the Butthole of Yankee-land. Robert E. Lee was no Racist. Jefferson Finis Davis was no Racist. Stephens was a white Supremacist but not a Racist; but Mister Lincoln was an anti-semitic, anti-black Racist AND white Supremacist. He did not even believe in the Divinity of our LORD and SAVIOUR, JESUS of Nazareth, the Living, Breathing CHRIST and Creator of the Heavens and Earth.

To Mathew Benjamin Abernathy 1 – I’ve been enjoying your comments thus far. If you are attempting to mock through sarcasm you are indeed a master. If you truly are the bat-shit crazy racist you portray, you are no less entertaining and a fine reminder of why humanity struggles. Either way, keep up the good work.

“History will not be erased simply by taking down a statue.”
Yes, I’m glad we understand that. Wait, you thought removing statues was about erasing history? What made you think that?
“Left alone the statues would simply fade, as everything they stood for wasted away.”
So you’re saying instead of being proactive about our glaring problems we should just quietly and passively sit around and wait for them to erode away from the natural weathering process? Sounds great. That’s real leadership.

This is one of the only times in history that the losing side is able to hang their battle flag and commemorate their losing generals. It’s sad and pathetic. They shouldn’t have just brought them down they should have blown them up. Imagine a hitler statue in Berlin? Would never happen and the people in Germany are ashamed of that time.

We have a “Hitler” Statue in Richmond to Mister Lincoln and another idolatrous and satanic Memorial to America’s Hitler in Washington City to that demagogue, humanist, atheist, Marxist, Communist, Socialist, and Fascist. Lincoln ruined this Country. The true western Holocaust was what Lincoln, Grant, Johnson, Sheridan, Sherman, and Hamlin did to the Holy Land/the American South.

Haha MC Fisher, so explain the Vladimir Lenin statue in Seattle, WA prominently displayed.. wasn’t he a murderer of millions and why in the hell no butt hurt over that?? Seriously.. LENIN?? in AMERICA??

The statue was erected as an attempt at irony, and is regularly defaced and derided.

But it’s coming down now because even though it is an object of derision, it still riles up people who think that a statue of ridicule like Lenin and a statue of reverence like Traitor Bobby Lee are somehow equal.

Yea thanks. I’m one of those on that side and I thank Landrieu for rousing my people from their deep sleep. Before those statues were ignored, forgotten and were just good bird perches. Landrieu has made our forgotten heroes martyrs. Thanks Mitch!!

The true Hate is coming from sympathisers with Bigots and Haters and prejudicial Idiots from the North. Germans may not have national Pride, but why should Yankees have national Pride when they abandoned this Nation’s Founding Fathers and the Principles of States’ Rights, Federalism, limited national Government, the Republic of George Washington, Freedom, Independence, Judeo-Christian Liberty, Laissez-faire Capitalism, Objectivism, Libertarianism, and Biblical Principles. Damn Yankees destroyed the Founding Fathers’ Dreams for the greatest Union of sovereign and independent States granting and ceding LIMITED Powers to a central Authority? Damn Yankees and Nazis are one in the same. Hatred, Bigotry, and Prejudice caused the War for Southern Independence; also known as Mister Lincoln’s Tax and Tariff War. It was the damn Yankee’s Racism against Southrons who were mainly Anglo-Celtic Caucasoids, Black Africans who were free and owned Plantations (they wanted to be part of the Aristocracy), Hispanics who sided with President Davis and Vice-President Stephens and served under Native American General Stand Waite, and the countless thousands of Native Americans NOT butchered, murdered, slaughtered, raped, molested, impregnated against their Will, robbed from and genocidally targeted by the Damn Yankees.

Blacks were never the Targets of Genocide except by other Blacks in Africa. Native Americans like me, Latter-day Saints like me, and Southrons like me were the Target of Genocide by the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Just as bad as Nazi Germany.

The State of Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715. As the monarch of France, Louis XIV personally presided over and personally profited from a systematic French slave trade in their colonial empire. Louis XIV created Le Code Noir which had the purpose of destroying African culture slaves possessed. As monarch, Louis XIV had more power than anyone in history over slavery as his word was law. We must NOT honor this man and thus must change the name of our state…

The city of New Orleans was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Phillipe II, Duke of Orléans. On the death of his father in June 1701, Philippe inherited the dukedoms of Orléans, Anjou, Montpensier and Nemours, as well as the princedom of Joinville. Upon the death of the prince de Condé in 1709, the rank of Premier Prince du Sang passed from the House of Condé to the House of Orléans. Philippe was thus entitled to the style of Monsieur le Prince. As regent, Phillip personally presided over and personally profited from a systematic French slave trade in their colonial empire. We must NOT honor this man and thus must change the name of our city…

Bourbon Street was named after the French Bourbon Dynasty which ruled France during the period in which they developed a systematic slave trade in their colonial empire. The name MUST be changed…

Dumaine Street is named after the son of Louis XIV. As Louis XIV personally presided over and personally profited from a systematic French slave trade in their colonial empire. We must NOT honor this man and thus must change the name…

Conti St was named for Prince de Conti, a representative of the ruling Bourbon family. As this family personally presided over and personally profited from a systematic French slave trade in their colonial empire. We must NOT honor this man and thus must change the name…

All the Faubourg names including Treme and Marigny must go. These areas were named after the owners of the slave plantations once on that property…

St Charles Avenue must go. St Charles was named after King Carlos III who reigned over Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759-1788. Carlos III presided over and profited from slavery during that period…

Carondolet Street is named after the Spanish colonial governor Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet who presided over and profited from slavery. It must go…

Claiborne Avenue is named after William C. C. Claiborne, a Governor of Louisiana who owned slaves, presided over slavery and killed slaves involved in a rebellion during his term. It must go…

Poydras Street is named after Julien de Lallande Poydras. Poydras had a large number of slaves and had many of them executed when they attempted a rebellion in 1795. It must go…

Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain was in a position of stewardship over several elements of the French slave trade including the French Navy which transported the French Colonial slaves. He also personally profited from the practice. As the Lake and Hotel and Expressway in our city are named after the same individual, they will have to go as well…

Tulane University and Tulane Avenue must go. Their namesake, Paul Tulane, personally owned slaves and Paul Tulane’s father made much of his fortune which Paul inherited trading slaves in Haiti…

Dillard University must change their name, It is named after James H Dillard, the son of slave owners who was educated at Tulane University, which was named after a slaveholder…

John James Audubon was born Jean-Jacques Audubon on his Father’s slave plantation in what is now Haiti. He also owned slaves in what was an important slave trading center in Louisville, Kentucky. Therefore the names of Audubon Park, Audubon Zoo, Audubon Nature Institute and all of the streets named Audubon must go, including Audubon Place…

Gallier Hall must go. James Gallier, the architect and namesake of Gallier Hall who also designed the Pontalba apartments, was born James Gallagher in Ireland. Gallier owned a crew of slaves which he employed at his sawmill in Lafayette City…

The difference is that the places you name have each acquired a rich history of their own that overshadows the origin of the name even if it was originally adopted to honor the person involved. A statue, on the other hand has as it’s sole purpose the celebration and usually the glorification of the person it portrays. Also, as the mayor explains, the very presence of the statues had the effect of a visual declaration that the attitudes toward people of color embodied in the Confederacy still held sway in the City of New Orleans. The sooner we in the South change the focus of our attention from an indefensible past to the future, the sooner our country will find a way to heal the divisions that beset us as a nation.

The past is not what divides us. It is the present. The failure to realize that is what leads to a faulty decision like Mitch L made. The taking down of those statues will have zero effect on the “division” that exists. Mitch doesn’t know how to work on that so he just makes a simple unilateral decision and takes an opportunity to grand stand and “feel good”. Meanwhile, the murders and crime in the city will grow. The hungry people with no shelter will continue to go hungry and sweat in the summer heat. But hey it’s ok we took the statues down.

How many Slaves did Full General Robert Edward Lee own, you libelous Liar? NONE! He hated Slavery and knew it would end peacefully WITHOUT BLOODSHED if the South could pick her OWN Way to end it without Military Intervention. Mister Lincoln and his bloodthirsty Rapists and genocidal Murderers called Generals created Vagabonds and Derelicts by the MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of freed Slaves who died homeless and starving with no Shoes, little Clothes, and no Help from the Government. Slave Owners generally paid Slaves a small Stipend so they could buy themselves out of Slavery, and precious few Slaves stayed Slaves their whole Lives. General Lee educated, trained, and taught his Father-in-Law’s Slaves before freeing them and even paid them for their Service. He was no Slaver. He did not own any, you libelous Liar. Slaver indeed. The Yankees hated the blacks and just wanted the Southern free Blacks (and there were hundreds of thousands of free blacks before, during, and after the War for Southern Independence in the Holy Land/American South) to be in total Dependence upon the Government … so they just transferred the Blacks to a new type of Plantation … sort of like what the Democratic Party has done right now, you know … the Party of Segregation, Jim Crow, Lynching, and the K.K.K.

Slaver … you do not know anything about History. The South wanted to END Slavery on her OWN Terms! Secession had nothing to do with PRESERVING Slavery but ending it on a peaceful and practical and pragmatic Fashion that would not have included Segregation, Lynchings, Jim Crow Laws (that was introduced by the Reconstruction Governments … you know, Scalawags and Carpetbaggers). Get your Facts straight. I have Degrees in History, English Education, and Secondary Education from Troy and Alabama State. You probably are a High School drop-out. New Orleans is a Road Apple and Mitch L loves keeping his “Slaves” in NOLA ignorant, stupid, and full of anti-white Racism and anti-Southern Bigotry.

Answer his question, what do you tell the little Black girl about the statues? Go ahead. Tell us something that will make these statues seem like something other than people wanting to deny her humanity.

Apparently, john, you are unable or unwilling to read. Landrieu’s decision was hardly unilateral at all; it obeys multiple legal mandates from multiple bodies. Nobody concludes that hundreds of years of division will be automatically or immediately wiped clean with removing statues dedicated to violence and those who practiced it. It’s called taking steps. Nobody concludes that removing four statues will instantly transform a huge drug problem. It’s called taking steps.

To Perry Hess. The history of the names you just mentioned is just that .. history. All of our states have negative history. We can acknowledge it, but it is not who we are as a state. Louisiana, New Orleans, etc is dynamic, constantly changing with each generation of people. This amazing change Mayor Landrieu has initiated is an amazing and positive change for this already beautiful state.

You are 100% correct. Mitch is a hypocrite. Are they going to change Robert E Lee Blvd to another name? Way easier to try and erase the past than deal with the present. Mitch let his true colors shine on this. He will pay for it.

We will all be happier when Robert E. Lee is remembered for his concession in defeat and his admonition to the Confederacy to let go of the past and stop pretending is was good.

There are plenty of people in the Civil War worth remembering.

Perhaps we could change the name of Robert E. Lee Blvd. to Robert Small, who was far more involved in actual work AND who has the felicitous example of freeing himself from his enslavement as well as capturing a Confederate vessel to hand it over to the Union Navy.

He isn’t going to change the street name because he is a hypocrite. “We” are not changing anything. They are trying to change history but instead are actually driving a wedge into the future. And you, well, you are just plain wrong about a lot of things.

Those names (however problematic) serve a function – to identify and direct geographically. Their current value and usage is largely independent of their original context.

The monuments have no function other than to honor the subjects, which is a completely different thing. Ideally we wouldn’t have street names honoring all the people you cite above (and I would not be opposed to changing any one of them), but to pretend long-forgotten family names on street signs are as egregious as literal monuments to slave owners and confederate generals is frankly ridiculous. I don’t know when we draw the line, but it’s definitely after taking down the monuments. Not before.

Robert E. Lee was no Slaver nor was he a Slave Owner you Bigot and anti-Southern Racist! He abhored Slavery and once said Secession was treacherous and seditious, even though West Point used to teach in their Textbooks that Secession was legal.

It is easy to draw the line. These are their parks. Public parks and public spaces are owned by the citizens of that community. As citizens, as taxpayers and as members of a community they have ownership of these parks and spaces, including the public art and the memory that is commemorated. Universities claim they are a community, so their community has a say, as occurred recently at Yale. These are community rights. That is where you draw the line. Our nation’s capitol is named after a slave-owner, and no one is talking about changing that. A community has a right to its own public memory and its own public art.

other People of Color, realize where they started from and have grown from it. Not only were slaves involved in this senseless war, but lots of people. They weren’t all Americans either. Are we to forget all of our past history and future? I am from a southern state, and agree that the statues were rude to some, but add other statues, instead of hiding the ones we have. We have statues of all kinds here, But I like to think those were put up to remind us of the strife we all went through to get here today. Are we to forget the holocaust, american indians, viet nam, etc….. we need to learn from our mistakes, not hide them away. I had grandparents that fought in the civil war, but that only helped me with family history. I do not want to forget my history, good or bad. So take down statues, if it makes you feel better. Are we to take down memorials to 9/11? Where do we stop. I have friends that went to Viet Nam not long ago, and from the pictures that I saw it did not show the Allies in a good way. But yet America has always taken in people with the hope for a better future.

The South tried to keep Blacks inferior? Was it the “South” that ruled on Plessy v. Ferguson? Was it the “South” that rendered the Dred Scott decision? No, that was the Supreme Court of the United States. If you would go to a library you could read all about the stuff you have posted incorrectly about. However, you did hit on exactly what is dividing our country now. People believing a false narrative and continuing to blame a certain group of people for all the problems that exist. Truth is that you are problem.

It hurts Stephen Matlock to know that the same flawed body that gave him Roe V Wade gave the country legal segregation and Jim crow 40 years after the Civil War and just about the time that Statue of Lee was going up in New Orleans. Stephen Matlock: you are the one wrong about the facts. Actually, you know the facts you just want to hold onto the ones you like the most and discard the others. Racial division never has and never will be just a “southern thing”. See Baltimore and NYC (and many other NON Southern places like Ferguson, MO and others). Taking down the monuments accomplishes nothing on that front. It was done as a “see what I can do” effort to exert control.

Mitch L in his own speech (the one you people think we didn’t read) DOES NOT KNOW what to tell the 5th grader. “Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it?
Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too?”

Damn right I know what to tell that 5th grader. It’s pretty simple.

Right, Mitch doesn’t know what to do so he yanks the monument down. Don’t worry little girl about that monument let’s just destroy it along with any lessons that might be learned from the story of that man or the circle it stood in. When in doubt erase it out. Mitch L. Doesn’t even have the depth to address the concerns or a 5th grader let alone the real problems that face the city. His idea is that if you don’t like the truth you need to change or hide it. Mitch is going to learn that he can run all day long but he can not hide.

Regarding your comment about Arlington national cemetery: it was established by a personally vindictive little man who was jealous of Lee and wanted to punish Lee himself (perhaps in compensation for the fact that he hadn’t done anything for the Union cause that qualified as 19th Century heroism).

A Hero that was a Yankee? OXYMORON! The only true Heroes for Patriotism (for the Principles of the Founding Fathers), Independence, Freedom, self-determination, and Judeo-Christian Liberty were the Southrons and Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, black Southron, and Jewish Americans who sided with the South.

Lincoln destroyed this Nation’s Purpose of Constitutional Powers created by the STATES, not the central Government. The STATES created a Government, but Mister Lincoln rewrote History claiming the Country/Nation/central Government came first, and that the States were inferior. THAT WAS WHY THE WAR WAS FOUGHT! Slavery was a red herring. And Slavery was not even a Factor in the War until 1863. Lincoln only two Years into his Term wanted to outlaw Slavery so he could move them all to Haiti, South America, and back to Africa. He was the white Supremacist. And Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan were quoted as saying they wanted to exterminate every single Native American in existence for supporting the South.

White Supremacy? You libtard Yankee-sympathisers are living in a fantasy World. My Native American, Southron, and Latter-day Saint Ancestors were the Targets of Genocide by the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, not the Confederate States of America. The damn Yankees did not want the blacks competing for cheap Labour. And black Slaves in the South were given better clothing, shelter and housing, medical care, and Food than the German, Italian, and Irish Labourers up north in the industrial Zones who were subject to slave-like Labour and were easily maimed or killed in dangerous working Conditions. Slavery was a blessing from GOD compared to what the damn Yankees did to my Native American and Latter-day Saint Ancestors …

White Supremacy??? What Planet are you from? Robert E. Lee was no white Supremacist. When he was the President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee U.) he was at his Episcopal Church and a former Slave walked down the Aisle to kneel down and partake of th Sacrament of Communion. Everyone gasped, but General Lee walked down, put his right Arm around the elderly black Man, knelt down by the former Slave and took Communion with him. That started the Integration of the Episcopal Churches in Lexington, Virginia. And if the Confederacy was all about white Supremacy, why did Mister Lincoln want an all-white North, an all-white West, and an all-white Midwest. Many Yankee States altered their Constitutions so that blacks could not settle there and would be publically flogged or whipped or beaten if they did not move out Illinois, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana …

Lincoln wanted all Blacks to move back to Africa. Blacks were treated horribly by whites up North in the Military … once they were finally admitted into the Military … at inferior Pay … and in segregated Units … serving on the front Lines as Cannon Fodder while the white Units were safer behind them.

And if the Confederate States of America was all about white Supremacy, why did they always allow free Blacks into integrated Military Units at the same Pay Grade as Whites, Native Americans, and Hispanics, and Jews. Grant expelled the Jews from the Union Army and hated Native Americans and Hispanics. Several Mexican States threatened to secede from the United Mexican States and join the Confederate States of America, but the first Jew in North America to become an executive/Presidential Cabinet Member, Judah P. Benjamin encouraged President Davis to say no to them for fear the independent, legitimate, and sovereign C.S.A. would lose trade and Importation of goods from England, France, and Europe.

White Supremacy my Fanny. You are an anti-Southern Bigot FULL and RIFE with Hate in your Heart. I am a Native American, Latter-Day Saint, Southron, so all three of my Cultures were the Targets of Genocide at the Hands of “Nazi-D.C.” up north. Get your Facts straight.

My 16 year old daughter said the same thing about Germany and Hitler to my mom when we were discussing this the other day. It was something my mom hadn’t considered and I think it helped change her thinking on the subject.

Slavers did not torture nor did they kill. The damn Yankees let innocent Children and Immigrants get hurt, maimed, lose Limbs, get killed in the industrial Slums up North and refused to employ blacks.

Slaves got treated like Family compared to how the German, Italian, and Irish Immigrants up North who got worse clothing, worse medical Care, worse food, worse housing and shelter, and worse working Conditions up North in the industrial Slums compared to the Holy Land/American South.

Millions of Native Americans died because of Yankee Troops. Native Americans served alongside Confederates and in integrated Units in the Holy Land/American South. Slave Owners were in the Minority. Eighteen to twenty-two percent of INDIVIDUALS in the Slaves States and Slave Territories and one Slave District (Washington D.C. where Mister Lincoln used slave-labour to build the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument) owned Slaves, but the percentage of slave-owning FAMILIES was much higher, up to thirty-five percent.

Millions? You are an an Idiot and a Liar who hates the South. You hate part of America just like your damn Yankee Ancestors who waged Nazi-like Genocide against my Native American Ancestors and Latter-day Saint Ancestors and Southron-Ancestors. Torture? Get a freaking Life, Boy. Lynching occured in Indiana to Mississippi AFTER the War and AFTER Slavery and only affected one thousand eight hundred people. Torture? The damn Yankees tortured my Native American Ancestors. The Confederate Government actually was the only North American Government to abide by the Treaties signed with the Native American Tribes/Nations/Confederations.

Extermination Orders against the Members of the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints was never issued by the Confederate States of America but by Governors of northern Yankee States in Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and by U.S. Presidents Van Buren to Buchanan.

Jews were most welcome in the Confederacy unlike up in damn Yankee Territory. Grant hated the Jews and expelled them from the Yankee Army. The South had Jewish Generals who created the Confederate Battle Flag and served in President Davis’ executive Cabinet: Judah P. Benjamin, the first Jew to become a Cabinet Member in a North American Country in History.

When do we tear down the Stars and Stripes? That was the banner that flew aloft the masts of slave ships and from the domes of slave staye capitol domes. It was the banner of the armies that conquered the Native American tribes and humiliated their people beyond measure.

Numerous Founding Fathers owned slaves. Why not rename Washington D.C. and State? How about erasing their names from countless municipalities, counties, universities, and public buildings? I believe that is the ultimate progressive objective here. The Confederates are just easy accessible, low hanging fruit.

Eternal? Not true. I studied Constitutional Law at the Jones School of Law at Faulkner University after I got Education, English, and History Degrees from Troy and Alabama State. Every single Leader in the Confederacy wanted Slaves to be trained, paid, and educated before Emancipation. In fact, President Davis emancipated 188,000 Slaves after they enlisted into the Confederate Army. After three Weeks of Military training in Georgia, Robert E. Lee surrendered. The North was damn lucky. If the War had gone on six Months longer, every single Slave in the South would have been freed, and President Davis would have had an Army of 2.2 millions black Confederates that would have massacred those insidious, treacherous, seditious, anti-semitic, racist, evil Rapists/Murderers/Pillagers/Pirates/Debauchers who lied and called them selves Soldiers.

And we would be a free and independent People today with a Country that actually loved and adored the original U.S. Constitution that ALSO protected Slavery and ALSO protected the Slave Trade. The Confederate Constitution outlawed the Slave Trade and forbade Slave Importation from anywhere, save the U.S. where Slavery was ALSO legal, and only with C.S. Congress’ two-thirds Permission. Get your Facts straight, you racist, anti-Southern Bigot.

Instead of listening to the words that the Mayor said and understanding them, some folks immediately think of a response and a counter argument. That’s not listening, and that’s not understanding and that’s not helpful.

Lest you think I’m some idealistic Northerner with a proud history of Unionist soldiers defending the Federal government — which indeed I do have — you can also look into the records of slave owners in the South to find people with my family name. Should you do so, you will find entries for at least two men named “Stephen Matlock” listed as slave-owners, one with 44 slaves in (I believe) Tatnall County, Georgia. That would make my namesake a millionaire in today’s dollars.

If I am going to own my Unionist forefathers and be proud of them, I need to own my Slaver forefathers and be ashamed of them.

Given that what my slaver ancestors did is both indefensible and not inherited (I have escaped that dead hand of the past), I just have to see my past for what it is: good deeds done by some men and women, and evil, wicked deeds done by others.

It’s my past. I can’t change it. I can maybe learn from it. Maybe I can warn others.

But by all that is holy, I will not lie about the past in order to make myself feel good about it or to make others feel comfortable with their own imaginary pasts.

This is what we are, people. America. A Constitution with great, great words, written and enforced by white slavers who denied the humanity of the men and women and children they grew rich from because of their labor and their lives.

There are stone Inscriptions of Moses in Washington City holding the Ten Commandments. Moses’ Laws allowed for legalised Slave-Ownership by the Israelite Jews in the Pentateuch. That is racist! The Bible protects Slavery and not even JESUS of Nazareth condemned Slavery! Wow! Get rid of the Inscription of that racist, Bigot Moses on the Supreme Court Building! He was a Slaver who let his People own Slaves! Get a freaking Life, Boy.

You post many, many words, as is your wont, but in the end, you are promoting the establishment of a rebellion government founded upon the enslavement of black humans to the profit of white slavers, and I am promoting the extirpation of said nation and said notion.

Statues are now gone. It is still unsafe to be out at night in New Orleans. Some people will still blame everything on white privilege (I never had it). I own the crappy building I once lived in with my single mom in poverty. The kids across the street have broken my windows multiple times, carved their names in my residents cars, tore my mailboxes off, etc. Maybe now that the statues are gone they will suddenly feel equal to me and their parents will make them responsible for their own actions??? I guess we will see.

You are the only odious one I know of next to America’s Hitler, Mister Lincoln who was NEVER President over my Ancestors. Lincoln’s Statues must be removed since if we disagree with ONE Aspect of History, we get to whitewash it and pretend it did not exist. I guess if the Facists and cultural Marxists in the ultra-left want to get rid of the valiant, honourable, noble, genteel Gentleman and Patriots who served their Country until they were illegally and unconstitutionally enslaved into another Country not their own, the true Patriots, the Southrons get to get rid of that Lincoln Statue in Richmond. He was adored by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Hilter idolised Lincoln in “Mein Kampf”, and yes, I read it for a College Course in political geography at Troy. Lenin and Stalin had Portraits of Lincoln in Moscow. Odious? Lincoln was a Pervert and Marxist. He was a Socialist and Fascist and stood for everything this Country fought to prevent in the American Revolution. And if you read the proper Books, the Southern States had more of a moral, ethical, civic, and Constitutional Right to secede than what the Founding Fathers did. The Founding Fathers were Traitors to their Government. They were British Citizens. They rebelled. The Southern States were VOLUNTARY and EQUAL Members of a Union of sovereign and independent States and Commonwealths. New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and Rhode Island specifically stated when they adopted and ratified the Constitution that they could abolish their Membership in the Union of independent States whenever they wished. The Yankees were the true Traitors to the Constitution. President Davis said he would rather leave the Union and save the Constitution than stay in the Union without the Constitution.

Why do you waste time and effort speaking to someone who has no education on the times or people involved in the issue he is discussing as if he knew what he was talking about/ Clearly he simply spouts his ideas as if they had actually occurred.

Rest assured Mitch L. is not going to do one thing to make New Orleans or your neighborhood safer. Stephen Matlock doesn’t give a damn about the city or you. All those people want is “their way”. If you do not agree with them 100% or choose to stand in their way they will destroy you. They are the source of division. They are the ones that try to force their faulty beliefs on everyone. The good new is that they are finally starting to wake up a sleeping giant. They will not like the response.

The problem is that YOU are not the public. WE ARE. You don’t get to decide the street names or what can or can not be viewed in public. The monuments are not paying tribute to white supremacy. They, like the rest of our country, have evolved. Mitch L and perhaps you have not evolved. The Civil War is no longer an issue facing us. Tearing down centuries old monuments solves nothing. It only addresses one issue: One group exerting their will over another. Strangely enough, the exact think you thing was wrong about putting the monuments up in the first place.

“[Democrats] McEnery and Penn having been elected governor and lieutenant-governor by the white people, were duly installed by this overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers, Governor Kellogg (white) and Lieutenant-Governor Antoine (colored).

United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.“

Amen, my good Sir! My Ancestors included Caucasian Latter-day Saints who served in the Mexican War and Native American Soldiers who served the Confederacy. The satanic Government in Washington was the biggest white Supremacist Government in History. I liken it to the British Government who mowed down Indians in India with machine Guns or Nazis in France and Poland.

You mean a Federal government that had to fight a five-year bloody war against rebellious white slavers, and had to bury the hundreds of thousands of loyal Unionist sons in Arlington National Cemetery?

That Federal government that initially fought to keep the Union and then incorporated the idea of freeing black chattel slaves from their white slave-owners?

This is a very moving speech. Unfortunately, it is based on a false narrative.

He criticizes those who would rewrite history, while doing so himself. Slavery may have been the rallying cry for war on both sides, but it was very far from the only cause of the war. To listen to this guy, you would think that every Confederate soldier came from a slave-owning family, every Federal solder loved black people enough to die for them, and there was no racism whatsoever North of Maryland. I promise you, nothing could be further from the truth.

It was called the “Civil War” for a reason…we are all one people. The war was a tragedy that could have, and should have, been prevented. It happened because of multiple failings of our government and those elected to serve it…Lincoln included. I support the troops. Each and every soldier, on both sides, who answered the call of their home to serve is a patriot.

I hope your really aren’t as narrow-viewed as your post imply. Yes, slavery was among if not THE reason for succession. By look a bit deeper will you. Why was it so important to the states? because they were racist? if you think that you are not very educated.
Slavery was fundamental to the south’s economy. Removing slavery would have bankrupted the south, the north was threatening everything they had, of course they were going to fight for it. If you had someone threaten you and your family you would do what you needed to do to protect them, even if it hurts someone else. If you say you wouldn’t your either a liar or you don’t hold anyone important in your life that you care about.

No, you said white Supremacy. There were Creole, Native American, Jewish, French, German, Anglo-Celtic, and Black Slave Owners all over the South. You are a Hypocrite and just plain hate the South and anything Southern. Just admit it, and I might have more Respect for you if you admit you are a Liar.

Yes, literally they wanted slavery because they were racists, and because that racism was earning them money.

“the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” This is literally from the mouth of the Confederate VP.

It is racism first, everything else second. There is no sanitizing this anymore. These people in charge were evil miscreants, and they need to be painted as such. I make no blanket judgments upon anyone living in the South now, but if you try and handwave an obvious sociopath, then I will obviously think less of you.

What a sad day. Mitch made a 100% political move. Clearly his knowledge of history is “incomplete”. It’s a lot easier to take down a monument than deliver a hot meal or perhaps provide shelter for the dozens of homeless people living under the bridge a quarter of a mile from Lee Circle. Or, how about working on the crime problem or maybe taking the pothole count on the streets of New Orleans under the 1,000,000 mark. It’s way easier just to take a “feel good” action. Clearly his decision was not “inclusive” (a word he likes to use) as a large number of people did not want to remove the monuments. The unilateral actions he took alienate half the people he claims to “include” and that is the real problem. The monuments are a part of history. The monuments did nothing (and were not erected to) stop any of the great things that have occurred in the time they stood. They only served as a reminder of the history of the city and the state. Before all of this if you had asked 100 random citizens of New Orleans under the age of 30 if they knew what Lee Circle was probably 99% would know. If you asked them who Lee was maybe 10% would have known. This is a story about a man who wanted to exert power not about racism. There will a reply and ramifications.

The problem is Stephen that Mitch L has had years to work on the other problems and they are getting worse. Like it or not, many people in the city (by the way are you from New Orleans or are you a resident?) do not agree with the removal of the monuments. A reminder of the past (even the negative parts of the past) is not a bad thing. The 13 stripes represent 13 slave holding colonies. Should the US Flag be changed? Like I said, lots of people in the city did not even know who the Lee in Lee Circle was until Mitch decided to make it an issue. The statues are part of an evolving city. Taking them down serves only to increase the growing divide.

Robert E. Lee loved Blacks, Whites, Jews, Christians, Native Americans, Germans, the Anglo-Celts, the Hispanics, because all fought for Southern Independence. That was the ONLY Goal of the War: an independent Southern Republic based on the Constitution of the United States of America. The Yankees abandoned it. Robert E. Lee was no white Supremacist nor was he a Slaver. You are ignorant or just plain Liar, for you are spouting off Falsehoods and Half-Truths and biased and slanted Opinion as if they were Facts. That is a logical Fallacy called “begging the question.” I took Logic and Rhetoric Classes at Alabama State, Morality at Troy. Philosophy at Clemson, and Ethics in Science at Florida. I also briefly studied Constitution Law at the Jones School of Law at Faulkner University in Montgomery. I have read every single founding Document of both American Republics countless times. You are either a Liar who hates and hates and hates and just spouts off Racism as a way to bounce off your own Prejudices like an invisible Shield, or an uneducated Idiot. Which is it? Both U.S. and C.S. Constitutions protected Slavery, and both were anti-Slavery in some Form. But the U.S.A. is a Nation of Lynchings, Jim Crow, Segregation, Plessy vs. Ferguson, Dredd Scott Decision, and the K.K.K ….. and should I even mention the American Nazi Party in the ’30’s and ’40’s that was granted special Protection by the U.S. Government to exercise their Rallies in the Streets? Grow up.

I return to the words of the secessionist states, the Cornerstone Speech, and the creator of the first Confederate National Flag: the Confederacy and the rebellion were about the eternal establishment of black chattel slavery, from first to last, to the profit of white slavers and to the elevation of white supremacy.

And not for nothin’ New Orleans basically sat out the Civil War after April 1862 when it was conquered by the Union Navy and occupied by the Yankees thereafter. Richmond at least has a legitimate historical claim on the people portrayed in those statues. New Orleans, not so much. And good thing too.

Yep. The moment the cannons fired on Fort Sumter the war was lost. Each state that removed itself from Congress meant that those states no longer could block the abolition of slavery. The North was better resourced and better allied, with a much richer industrial base and more people. Plus, people in the North who were free black citizens were highly motivated to fight for the freedom of their families in the South.

It was the absence of the South that led to the Great Civil Rights Amendments — the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

The South began seceding even before Lincoln was sworn in as President.

This was, by the light of white supremacy in the South, a foolish, wasteful, and prideful war.

I’m glad the South lost.

I’m glad I live in a country where my black brothers and sisters are at least notionally free and equal, and that we can fight for actual equality.

I’m saddened by the many, many white people who still think white supremacy is a going thing.

Are you delusional or demented??????? It has NOTHING to do with white Supremacy! I am not even majority Caucasian. And white is hardly and ethnicity or race. “White” is a Perception invented by the Inhabitants of Vik, Norway (the Vikings) who did not consider the Europeans they conquered to be the same as themselves.

My non-white Ancestors served valiantly in the Confederate Army and I am proud of them. I will defend the egalitarian and altruistic Robert E. Lee until I am dead in the Grave, and I want as many Confederate Flags on my Grave on BOTH Memorial Days just in Defiance of a satanic U.S. Government that murdered, pillaged, burned, raped, molested, forcefully impregnated, looted, plundered, massacred, and genocidally assaulted my People in the Indian Territory, Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina. I even had a distant Cousin from Lauderdale County, Alabama who joined the Union Army. I went to his Grave in Limestone County and pissed on it. He participated in the genocidal mania that led to the Holocaust that was Mister Lincoln’s War, the Mormon Wars, the Wars against the Native Americans, and Reconstruction.

White Supremacy … what a Joke … you do not even live in New Orleans … you have no right to say anything in this Matter.

I don’t have to believe it, though, and I don’t have to pretend that a belief is the same as facts.

The attempts to change the subject are futile when the original question is asked: Did the Confederacy rebel for any reason other than black chattel slavery for the profit of white slavers in their prison / labor camps to assert white supremacy?

Great speech. I live in Lexington,KY, which was the second largest slave market in the U.S. The term “sold down the river”, originated in Lexington, as sold slaves were marched about 60 miles to Maysville, KY, on the Ohio, and then sent to the market in New Orleans for further dispersal. We also have our Confederate monuments on the Old Court Square. They are shameful and should be removed, but Lexington, KY, unlike New Orleans, just doesn’t have the will or leadership to accomplish that.

It hurts Stephen Matlock to know that the same flawed body that gave him Roe V Wade gave the country legal segregation and Jim crow 40 years after the Civil War and just about the time that Statue of Lee was going up in New Orleans. Stephen Matlock: you are the one wrong about the facts. Actually, you know the facts you just want to hold onto the ones you like the most and discard the others. Racial division never has and never will be just a “southern thing”. See Baltimore and NYC (and many other NON Southern places like Ferguson, MO and others). Taking down the monuments accomplishes nothing on that front. It was done as a “see what I can do” effort to exert control.

Mitch L in his own speech (the one you people think we didn’t read) DOES NOT KNOW what to tell the 5th grader. “Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it?
Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too?”

Damn right I know what to tell that 5th grader. It’s pretty simple.

Right, Mitch doesn’t know what to do so he yanks the monument down. Don’t worry little girl about that monument let’s just destroy it along with any lessons that might be learned from the story of that man or the circle it stood in. When in doubt erase it out. Mitch L. Doesn’t even have the depth to address the concerns or a 5th grader let alone the real problems that face the city. His idea is that if you don’t like the truth you need to change or hide it. Mitch is going to learn that he can run all day long but he can not hide.

Racial division is healed one step at a time. And it IS a real problem in New Orleans. This is just one step – a very visible one – to heal that divide. The USA abolished Jim Crow laws in 1965; that these statues weren’t torn down then was a mistake that is now being corrected.

New Orleans has everything to gain from this and nothing to lose – except four statues that represent white supremacy and the heinous silent approval of it. Racist-apologists can deflect all they want, but arguing to keep those statues is the equivalent to a requesting to keep a Nazi statue in Germany.

Jim Crow, Segregation, the K.K.K., lynchings, Dredd Scott, Plessy versus Ferguson, the Slave Trade Importation from the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe (and the Yankee States where the largest Slave Ports were) existed NOT in the Indian Territories, Mormon-controlled Land, or the Confederate States of America, but in the UNITED States of America. Confederate Leaders had nothing to do with these Issues. You are muddying the Waters on purpose to get People to buy into this horribly racist, bigoted, prejudiced, and satanic B.S. Political Agenda from the 1984 Thought Police in the ultra-leftist libtard Progressive wing of the Democratic-Republican single Party. The Libertarians are the only ones who preach the unadulturated Truth.

No, good sir, Confederate leaders either directed the secession and unfruitful war, or signed on to it after the rebellion started. It was conscious choice to support white slavers and eternal black chattel slavery.

We already have Nazi Statues in Richmond and Washington City … it is of that Communist and Fascist Mister Lincoln who was NEVER my Ancestors’ President. I do not believe in Hell, but I hope he is miserable where he is with that horrible Wife of his. Booth should have shot him twice. He led a satanic War that could have been avoided but he needed the Tax and Tariff Revenue so he let two million Amputees lose Limbs and let six hundred sixty thousand people get butchered by his so-called Generals who hated Jews and Blacks and Native Americans a millions times worse than what they made the greatest American Christian in History, Robert E. Lee, appear today.

Why do you continually associate the decision to remove statues venerating individuals whose actions and ideals are opposed to the current ideals of the nation with the idea that we should pretend that those individuals didn’t exist, and that we should no longer discuss them or educate our children about them? It’s not the existence of these people that is seen as a problem, it is the public celebration of them – and hence of the cause that brought them to historical prominence – that people take issue with. I haven’t seen a single call to stop teaching about the importance of the Civil War, or to no longer allow discussion of the actions of the men whose place in history was forged from a morally repugnant cause.

Generally when people bring up Hitler and Nazi Germany in an online discussion it is for the purpose of hyperbole or distraction, but in this case I would argue that it is completely warranted. Our nation’s period of buying and selling human beings as property is atrocious. It wasn’t the only reason for the Civil War, but it was unquestionably a big reason for it. Hitler’s ethnic genocide wasn’t the only reason for WWII – or even the biggest reason – but it was morally repugnant, and is inexorably linked to his place in history. Germany no longer has heroic monuments to Nazi leaders, because the German people are, in general, horrified by what he did and what he stood for. But they still teach the hell out of it! They aren’t pretending there were no Nazis, and the idea that by removing monuments venerating Hitler they are denying his existence is at least silly, if not downright ludicrous.

All of this is beside the point of whether or not Mitch Landrieus is a good mayor. The current discussion is on the rightness of the decision to remove the statues, and the content of his address; discussion on the motivations for his timing or the affect on his political stock may be important, but they’re largely out of scope.

This is a powerful speech that all our representatives, congressmen, senators, politicians, clergy
should listen to, read for themselves and bring to their constituents to help heal, unite, and strengthen our country with so much possibility. I was raised in New Orleans and this speech fills my heart with goodness for a city I love. Thank you.

It was not a Rebellion. King George III tried to get the original thirteen Colonies’ Slaves to rebell by offering them their Freedom. That Slavers’ Rebellion? Of 1776? Because all thirteen Colonies had legalised Slavery and defended it vehemently.

The Southern States did not rebel. We formed a legitimate Nation LEGALLY! Secession was taught at West Point for Decades as legal and Constitutional, even though Robert E. Lee did not like that when he was the Commandant of the U.S. Military Academy.

Those gallant, brave, noble, royal, genteel, Judeo-Christian Ladies and Gentleman of the South are not Losers. Fate has granted them Immortality. My Latter-day Saint, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Confederate Ancestors were the greatest Generation this Continent has ever put forth.

Mister Lincoln wanted that War to keep his greedy, filthy Communist Hands on Southern Property and Taxes and Tariff Revenue. He even wanted the Slave States to keep their Slaves so he could reap the Benefits of a rich Southern Economy. He was losing the War and decided to start a Slave Insurrection, but because Southern Slaves got treated better than the Labourers in the industrial Slums up north, they stayed loyal to their Families. And the Emancipation Proclamation protected Slavery in West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Washington City, Delaware, New Orleans, Parts of Louisiana and Arkansas, and parts of Virginia.

Lincoln was a Liar, a Hypocrite, a Humanist-Atheist, and an insidiously evil Hypocrite who started an unnecessary War all to preserve the Myth of a perpetual Union and control the Southern States’ Money. Black, white, all the Yankees cared about was green.

I found it a little hypocritical, bringing up the concentration camps in Germany. Aushwitz, Dachau still stand. They haven’t been torn down or removed. They are stoic, solemn, monuments to those who perished; the showers,(complete with claw marks on the doors),ovens, and barbed wire are all there; reminders of a dark chapter of German, AND HUMAN history, not to glorify, but also to never to be forgotten. That is how I view our American Civil War markers. I am a Charlestonian, and our fair City is as steeped in Civil War history as your own. Fort Sumter still stands in our Harbor as does the slave market on East Bay Street and Market Streets. Boone Hall Plantation still stands… and is a popular tourist destination. The Hunley submarine has been raised from Charleston Harbor and is being worked on by archaeologists who hope to preserve it for future Generations. What we are talking about here is the preservation of our history itself, regardless of how dark it may be. You cannot sanitize and pasteurize history for future Generations from the Horrors that this country endured 150 years ago. When you begin to remove the symbols, then you begin to remove the lessons that accompany them. When you begin to remove the statues, you begin to remove the names of those they represent, and who were responsible for those events. The danger then becomes that you have Rewritten or erased segments of our legitimate history. Whether you like it or not Robert E Lee is without question a historical figure in our nation’s history as is Jefferson Davis and PT Beauregard and so forth. I think it is important that students learn about these men and what their ideals were so that they may learn caution….and self restraint. And let us not forget that these monuments were erected by American citizens. Let us also not forget the Congress deemed all Confederate soldiers US veterans in 1952 and thereby eligible for full honors.. it goes without saying that slavery was a horrible Institution and many people suffered needlessly and horribly. Obviously these facts are included in our well documented history. But our monuments are important to us. Examine for a moment Theodore Roosevelt. He had very colonialist views regarding the Philippines and the Caribbean. Many people died and suffered because of his exploits, but he also accomplished many wonderful things as well. I’m sure the Spanish in the Filipinos don’t see him in the same light as we do. Should we remove his image from Mount Rushmore? Should we start removing Confederate statues from the Gettysburg Memorial Battlefield? Where does it stop? What’s next Vicksburg? Antietam? And after all is sanitized, when do we start burning the books? I mean if we want to really forget these people and what they stood for and what they did… we just have to burn the books. For me it’s not about being offended by a statue. And I don’t mind revising history to get the facts straight. But removing it to make a few people happy, is sacrilegious…. and quite frankly, UnAmerican. I also find it disturbing that one mayor, and some of political alleys can wield this sort of power. Your city’s history is OUR AMERICAN history.

He states the decision was made only after judicial, executive, & legislative support; so regardless of race or political affiliation, I’m guessing this decision makes a lot more than “a few people happy” as you say.

That the monuments have already been taken down, after the collective process it took to get to this point, and you’re expressing your displeasure on an online post written after the fact, could mean you’re really in the minority here.

Eloquent Speech. Well thought out and purposeful. Will it change anything, even after the statues are removed? Well, in the penning of this speech, and the expression of these words, people have again heard reasons and ways for us to move forward, and perhaps right a few wrongs. I am not enthusiastic about removing landmarks. I feel they belong to the era that lived that history. But to those who can influence changer acertain amount of pandering might go a good ways toward eventual universal understanding of what actually transpired.

Yes, it will change things.
1. The people attacked by these monuments — our black American brothers and sisters who daily saw these white supremacists honored above them — now can see that all Americans despise these men and their actions, and can fell just a bit more like they are as much a part of America as the rest of us. “E Pluribus Unum” come to life, as it were.
2. The people supporting these monuments have one less site to glorify as a place dedicated to the fantasy of the white supremacist Confederacy. We’re removing the idea that it’s “normal” to be white supremacist and safe from criticism.
3. The people who are not as aware of the reasons for the monuments will have fewer reasons to believe the imaginary past these monuments speak to.
4. The good people of America who want America to heal have an example of how love trumps hate.

By removing the monuments to white supremacy, and by de-normalizing white supremacist behavior in public, we’re making it more “normal” to be unconcerned about an imaginary past as having anything to do with today.

White Supremacy again? You certainly live in a dream World. There were no Blacks in the Union Army treated fairly, no Jews treated fairly in the Union Army, no Hispanics or Latter-day Saints in the Union Army, few Native Americans, and they were treated unfairly.

The South had Native American, Jewish, and Creole Generals and Cabinet Members. The South had Mexican, Haitian, and Cuban Soldiers. The South had integrated Black and White Units fight at Gettysburg against the satanic Yankees who exterminated my Peoples’ Tribes and burned down my other Ancestors’ Temples and Churches.

You are preaching Lies and Distortions. You are no History Professor. I went to an H.B.C.U. in Montgomery, and even they loved me depsite me being the biggest Confederate Supporter (non-white) in central Alabama when I went to A.S.U. They did not LIKE the Fact that I was a Confederate, but they liked me for me and put up with my 1993 lime green Honda Civic del Sol being decked out with Car Flag, Magnets, S.C.V. Tag, Cross of Saint Patrick front Plate, and Confederate Flag Bumper Stickers. They knew I loved everyone from the South, and that includes all Southrons. The Lady Hornets on the Basketball Team I worked for even loved me. They teased the Hell out of me, but seeing as I was not entirely Caucasian visibly, they softened their Stance. It was at Alabama State that I learned even non-whites owned Slaves and Plantations in Alabama, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Charleston, Columbia, Nashville, Richmond, Baltimore, Delaware, and many other places.

You are no Historian. You are a Poser filling People’s Heads with Hate-filled Filth meant to detract from the Independence-minded, Freedom-loving, Judeo-Christian Heritage that is what it means to be a cultural and ethnic Southron. My People have been on this Continent before America even existed.

You are probably a Bill O’Reilly Fan, right? He hates the South too and is a lousy Historian. All his Books “Facts” came from Martin Dugard.

Slavery was not invented by America. It was not founded by our founding fathers. Slavery was a reality in the world when America was founded.

And I think it says a lot more about our nation that less than 90 years after our founders signed the Declaration of Independence, our nation came to terms with slavery, and freed the slaves in a war that took nearly half a million lives on both sides.

And even with that, to condemn America’s slave owners is to be disingenuous about the origins of the slave trade. The people responsible for selling blacks from Africa into slavery were not white Americans, they were black Muslims.

Now, in spite of the injustice of slavery, consider these things:
In America, black slaves faced a less dangerous life than they did in Africa at the time. It is not denial I am engaging in, it is a correction of the record.

Slavery was morally wrong, as it has been since the days of the Pharoahs. But it had become the fashionable trend in Europe long before the United States came to be. And European culture drove much of American society in our formative years. This is not an absolution of white slave owners, but you must also commit the sin of omission when defining America as the birthplace of slavery.

America developed a conscience regarding slavery in less than 90 years. Do you realize what that represents in terms of a nation righting a wrong? Show me any other nation that had such a hasty conference with a moral imperative as the United States?

Racism is a reality of human nature, just as ar many other prejudices not only built into our culture, but engrained in human DNA.

America is the best place on earth to be a black man or woman. It is the safest place to be a black man or woman.

America will never be perfect, but we keep on striving. But let’s not bow down to Mitch Landrieu and act as though he got everything right in his lengthy prose. Citing Mandela as universally loved is to ignore the actions of Nelson and Winnie Mandela after the fall of apartheid. The persecution of whites in South Africa today was fully endorsed by the Mandelas, who were not nearly as lilly-white as the revisionist historians would have you think. Afrikaans in South Africa have been murdered, run off their lands, raped, pillaged and burned alive in the ensuing decades since Nelson Mandela was coronated.

If Mr. Landrieu is going to go so far to correct the history in New Orleans, then he should be consistent in correcting the narrative upon which he based his speech.

There is not a white person alive in America today that ever owned slaves, or had any connection to slavery.

Reparations are not only impractical, but have also largely been fulfilled in the form of welfare systems, racial quotas, Affirmative action, and the passing of time.

Just as erection of statues to a handful of key figures in New Orleans did not make every New Orleanean a racist, it didn’t represent a reverence of these men, it merely registered a page of history which for better or worse was culturally significant.

Healing under false pretense is as phony as Barack Obama lowering the Sea Level.

Healing takes place in the hearts of men and women. And there has been much more of that healing than most would admit on the left side of a political aisle.

The removal of statues will not magically transform New Orleans into the land of Milk and Honey. Instead, it will embolden people of various persuasions to taunt, agitate and seek out a ound of flesh they mistakenly believe they are entitled to.

Meanwhile, black on black violence is epidemic in America’s urban corridors, and speechifying does nothing to address the plight of urban populations who bought into the Great Society, and quietly slipped the noose of government largess around their own necks, while also buying into what George W. Bush described as the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.

I am a West African, never lived in America, and I have lived and and worked in some of the main African port cities whose histories have been shaped by the slave trade.

I invite you to provide the rationale for your statement below, where you have written:
“In America, black slaves faced a less dangerous life than they did in Africa at the time”.

Ideally, kindly comment on aspects such as
– the morbidity and mortality associated with the journey to the U.S.
-the physical health sequelae resulting from the change of habitat, exposure to foreign disease and dietary patterns
– the physical health impact of long hours of menial work
-the physical and psychosocial impact of sexual violence by plantation slave owners
– the psychological impact of being a second class person with limited legal status
– the psychological impact of separation from home, present and future family members.
-the psychosocial impact of destruction of core social values and identity, such as basic things like language.
-known academic research on the typical life expectancies of field and house slaves at the time.

Obviously, you also need to include in your answer a more fleshed out vision of what “life was like in Africa at the time”, because I am assuming you have some knowledge of that, otherwise you would not be able to make the statement that you have. Please consider the dangers and perils of remaining and living in the country of origin. Africa obviously isn’t a monolith, and most slaves were taken from the West of course. So you could start with a typical enough site for slave traffic, such as Ghana, or southeastern Nigeria, where I come from. I was fortunate to be educated in school in Africa, and to learn a little about West African history. I suspect that our answers about who or what presented the most danger to an adult African living in a city state or village around the time of the slave trade will differ.

I look forward to your thoughtful reply. Perhaps afterwards we could talk about your postulation that America is the safest place on earth to be black; a social experience which presumably you know quite a bit about.

I don’t think you’ll get anything useful from a white guy ‘splaining to everyone how wonderful black chattel slavery was, because he has no concept of forced servitude backed up with the power of the state by guns and dogs and whips and chains, that black humans attempting to create relationships and families could be split on a whim of profit to the white enslaver, that black men and black women and black children were all treated as expendable mules: valuable as long as they provided value, but discarded when they broke down or became unwilling to work. The reason we have a “police” society is because in the South we needed to be sure that black humans (I keep saying “humans” because I want to emphasize the chasm of compassion that existed between white humans and those whom they attempted to dehumanize as “black enslaved people”) were not just wandering around, free, or possibly escaping. Black humans enslaved by white supremacists were given as little as possible in order to survive, were left in their pain and wounds because their pains were unacknowledged, Their language and religion and creativity and humanness was stolen from them, and replaced with the image of the compliant, unthinking, silent, happy servant, and anyone who deviated from this was cruelly punished.

He’s imagining some happy land of “Oh Susanna!” or “My Old Kentucky Home,” where white men like him were blessed and cherished and acknowledged as supreme.

There is no empathy or compassion or knowledge in him.

If you engage, realize you are doing it for us.

He will never listen. He’s white. He’s a man. He’s an American. The world was once his and his alone, and now that people of color, world-wide, are coming into their own, he’s frightened and wants to bring back the past.

Do you just plain hate Caucasians??? You are horribly emotionally cruel to that Gentleman! Have you no Shame? You are a Ghoul with no Respect for anybody that you claim to have talking shameful Garbage like that to him when that was an intelligent though misguided Post he made.

The only black Africans that were Slaves in America were ALREADY Slaves in Africa owned by their local tribal Chieftains, Kings, and family Members. The three biggest African Kingdoms other than Egypt in the Eleventh-Century relied on Gold, Silver, and the Slave Trade to Europe and Asia to be as rich as they were. I studied and graduated from Alabama State University which is an H.B.C.U. I took Afro-American Humanities, Afro-American Geography, African Geography, Afro-American Literature I and II and Afro-American History I and II.

If they were Slaves here, they were already Slaves in Africa. And black American Slaves got treated like Property by the invading Yankees. They beat, robbed, killed, enslaved, raped, and molested Slaves too just because they were just as full of Hate as anybody else.

It is peculiar to see someone defend continued enslavement because the enslaved were already enslaved when stolen away to America to serve as enslaved workers and breeding stock for more enslaved workers.

Amen, good Sir! Slavery existed in the Book of Exodus (and even Genesis, and not even the CHRIST condemned Slavery), Slavery exists in this Country today with illegal Aliens being brought into America in Cargo Containers and sold into Sex Slavery, Human Trafficking, and imported and forced to work on Farms for ten cents an Hour after a Half a Million-dollar Fee for bringing them in. The Blacks do not care a damn about the Slavery that exists in Uganda today in Central America today, in South America today, in Southeast Asia today, or even in the United States today. They want to piss and moan and whine and complain about my brave, honourable, gallant, genteel, Duty-bound Heroes who served my Family well in a War about NATIONAL DEFENCE ONLY, but these black Politicians do nothing to coerce People to stop shipping Latinos, Hispanics, and Asians into this Country illegally as Sex Slaves or Slaves on Farms or Factories, because Slavery is not the Issue. It is about victimising themselves, keeping their own People mad at Whitey so they can get Donations through Extortion into the Rainbow Coalition, the S.P.L.C., the S.C.L.C., the A.D.L., the A.C.L.U., and the National Action Network, so they can stay rich and in Politics and keep sucking at the Government Teat while their People live in squalor and poverty and ignorance and crime and no educational Standards in L.A., Detroit, New Orleans, Washington City, and Chicago.

Nobody cares about Slavery today except Libertarians and Confederates who want it exterminated PERMANENTLY! You horrible Hypocrites only care about Slavery that existed for four Years in the Confederate States. You ignore this Nation was founding by rich, aristocratic, Land-owning, Plantation-owning and Banking Merchants who all owned Slaves and hated Jews, Muslims, non-Northwestern European Whites younger than twenty-one.

This Country is founded on the biggest Lies in the Universe, and People like you perpetuate that. That is nauseatingly horrible. This is 1984 …

Thanks – but to be entirely fair, I am only working out what I’ve learned from much better and more educated people.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” said Sir Isaac Newton, and while I in no way compare to him in intelligence or learning or effectiveness, I am deeply aware of all the acknowledged experts who have gone on before us, including the men and women who descended upon the South for voter registration drives, leading to the murders by Southern white supremacists of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Southern preacher who erupted from a bus boycott to become the moral voice of a racially divided Nation.

There are people who have done far, far more than I can do through a blog post. But this is the tool I have: writing words and researching history.

The people who’ve done all the heavy lifting–they should be called out for their own work at the sacrifice of their lives.

Watch it with the high road BS Stephen. The standing on shoulders comment was a backhanded insult to a short critic. Form your thoughts or youre just another internet comments flamer like those you rail against whose main weapon is a wiki link.

Sort of amazed at the people bringing this down to liberal vs. conservative. As though every conservative is arguing to re-install monuments of men who were ready to die for their ‘rights’ to buy and sell slaves. Yes there were other factors that contributed to the civil war, but slavery was essential to those other factors – the Confederate leaders and secession statements themselves all say so in black and white. We can read about these godawful people in our history books the way we read about Nazis or about the 9/11 bombers, but I’d rather not have monuments of them in my city.

If your argument is about all the streets, buildings and groups with those names, then we can have a conversation about changing those too. But to argue we put those hideous monuments back? There’s nothing sensible about that, and we as conservatives (not the phonies masquerading here) have enough good old fashioned common sense to know that.

The biggest lie everyone believes is that these statues stood as symbols of white supremacy. Perhaps when they were erected that was true but until Mitch L seized upon an political opportunity that came about from the tragic killings in a city 800 miles away, the truth is those statues had stood in anonymity for decades quietly watching the great progress the city made. They were not the subject of much conversation let alone some great “white” uprising. So, we know that them coming down is just a sick politician’s opportunism to the nth degree. What he didn’t really plan for was the backlash. Now that raises the question that if they were standing in anonymity then why the hell do people have so much fever on the other side to keep them up? The answer is that our country is flailing and failing at every turn. People are becoming more divided not less. Civility is all but dead in the arena of public discourse. If Mitch L had done one decent thing to help the city instead of grandstanding about century old statues solely for political gain then perhaps people wouldn’t be so pissed off. Bad shit is happening in the city every day and that stooge is expending time, energy, and money on something that went largely unnoticed or talked about for half a century. That’s complete BS and he is too. It’s going to come with a cost for Mitch. He is acting exactly like the people he claims to despise.

Our country’s so divided…so we have to get upset at people taking down monuments of division. Right, guy. Get mad at the people getting salty over their monuments of the defeated being torn down, not at the people who are glad that someone is trying to bring everyone together.

Yeah, sometimes it hurts when you tear off a Band-Aid, and you have to remember the old wound. Get past it, move on.

“McEnery and Penn having been elected governor and lieutenant-governor by the white people, were duly installed by this overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers, Governor Kellogg (white) and Lieutenant-Governor Antoine (colored).

United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.”

In 1993 the inscriptions were altered.

Hardly implying the “decade” you allude to.

It’s perfectly OK to acknowledge what they were erected for. It doesn’t shame you to admit that. They were monuments to white supremacy.

John, I moved to the South in 88 from a dirt poor area of the West. We thought it was the land of milk and honey. And we looked around at things like these statues and thought, “holy sh** racism is still alive and well”. We would laugh at people in bars with their “the South will rise again” chest thumping. our respones was “yeah and get it’s ass kicked again” . We also found out we could say that in any bar because of how fat the locals were and how hard our poor upbringing had made us. Yep two of the five of us were spicks. Never had to throw a punch everyone one of those good old boys backed down from a couple of 18 year old boys. So the only place statues like this weren’t an issue 30 years ago is in your social circle. Notice no wiki link on this on you liberal hacks. Never saw any of you entitled bimbos digging a ditch next to me and brothers back then. Sure see a Lot of you on the high horse today though.

Imagine? Still having a murdering, pedophile , sex and slave trader statue, in a State that just recently (1983)repealed and archaic false law called the one drop rule in which a white woman Susan Gullory Phipps is still considered black under? Talk about primitive.

General Lee was an old man when he agreed to lead Southern armies. All the life prior to that since graduating from West Point as a young United States Army officer, he spent in service to the United States. Part of that service was combat deployment ot Mexico where he fought as a scout alongside Grant and other Northern officers. To say he did not serve the United States is an insult and a blatent lie. Landrieu should be ashamed to tarnish the name of a good man, a man of honor who freed his own slaves 8 years before the war even began. Rewriting history is, and has always been the sure mark of tyrants.

You are no Historian and you make ALL Americans look like bigoted, prejudiced, hateful, mean, revengeful Idiots who hate historical Preservation of Judeo-Christian Leaders who loved Liberty, Freedom, and Independence. Robert E. Lee loved the Union AND the Constitution but once the Union abandoned the Constitution he went where it was appreciated. Get a Life.

Quote; “Melissa told Denise and me that Alex wanted, more than anything else, to bring Lola’s story to the world. “This was his ultimate story,” Melissa said. “He was trying to write it for five or six years. He struggled with it.” end

So much hiding and the questioning of what is freedom, from a woman, who never could never experience it, to a man who was never really free himself until the end of his story.

This was an eloquent speech and a compelling message. I believe in my heart that the happenings during the days after Katrina were, in a significant part, fueled by those who would still hold confederate ideology as their core reasoning….I also believe that New Orleans needs to put these statues in a visible place with a strong narrative that in forgetting the past……we are in danger of repeating it. That while we, as an inclusive and compassionate city (we aren’t that in the state as a whole by a long shot!) understand that these statues are a reminder of what and where we came from and that we must never go back..ever!

We could also prevent it from happening by enfranchising all the black men who’ve lost their voting rights, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as Constitutional Amendments — INCLUDING the fact that voting is a right to be protected by the full faith and credit of the US Government.

People who can vote can change society without violence. Removing their right to vote and to participate in society removes their hope that they can change their unjust society.

I agree with you, my good Mate and Sir! Destroy ALL VESTIGES of the Confederacy! Take down every Monument, Memorial, Statue, Gravestone, Headstone, Marker, and disinter their Bones! I want all of it gone so History DOES repeat itself and the South DOES secede again, so we can have our Nation back in all her glorious Southern Glory, and we can live in Peace as a beautiful, glorious, honourable, altruistic, egalitarian, noble, genteel, Southern Republic: sovereign and independent as GOD wants us to be! I agree with you! Boulderise those Statues! Destroy every Grave Marker and Headstone to every single Confederate Veteran in existence! Dig up their Bones and pulverise them! Melt down all the Confederate Medals! Burn those old dusty Uniforms! Then History WILL repeat it self! Yay for History and those who want it to repeat itself like you, Stephen Matlock!

If you fought on the side of slavery, you were a traitor and you deserved to be chucked into the ocean with lead weights tied to your feet for supporting the use of government force to keep an entire population as chattel.

And if you still believe in it, you should be tarred, feathered, and chased in ridicule from every corner of the land- and then covered in bird seed so that every foul bird on the land can peck at his bloated skin. Landrieu was right in removing this- a public monument is not history, it’s glorification.

If you want your foetid Confederacy history, then put it in a museum, where it can be examined like the degenerate, pustule-riddled, inbred and shambling monstrosity that it was. Do not put it up on a public pedestal to glorify it.

And that’s the bottom line that you are trying to blur: it’s not “erasing history” you are protesting, you are protesting against no longer being glorified and finding your repulsive anti-American symbols displayed with pride.

Because you apparently find it a thing of pride that you once were slave-holders, and fought to *death* to keep other people captive. And that just says everything about who you are.

You know nothing of History. My Ancestors were the Descendents of Slaves. I had Scottish and Irish and Welsh Slaves owned by the English in Virginia, and even in England. My Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Ancestors were subjected to satanic Cruelty at the Government you love so damn much. You are a Fool and a Degenerate. Robert E. Lee hated Slavery, and discussed Ways to end it before the War ended with President Davis. If the War had lasted six Months longer, the Confederacy would have ended Slavery permanently long before the United States would have since Mister Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation protected Slavery legally in the U.S.A. Get your Facts straight. Robert E. Lee never owned any Slaves nor did his Parents.

If two countries, both of which have legal slaves, fight a war, how do you justify saying one side fought on the side of slavery and the other fought against it?

From Lincoln’s first inaugural address: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

It is an elision to say “one side fought for slavery and one side fought against it.”

The rebellious states fought to maintain and extend slavery, true, but the Union fought to preserve the Union, and in so doing gradually incorporated abolitionism into their cause, seeing that a nation re-united but still allowing black chattel slavery would never be a free Union.

Im confused. As in my families case my great grandfather was the largest slave owner in a particular county in Missouri yet was a colonel who fought for the union. He had Mousori family members who died fighting for the north. Why would they fight for a cause that was detrimental to them personally? Perhaps their reasoning had very little to do with slavery and more to do with states rights?
I have no answers just questions.

You might want to remind ole Mitch, and many of the other obviously ignorant people commenting on here which political party brought you slavery, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, poll taxes, literacy tests for voting, separate but equal, and a whole host of other wonderful things;

YOU GUEST IT!
It’s the political party to which Mitch belongs:
The DEMOCRATS!

You’ve discovered the secret hidden from anyone who does not have access to newspapers, encyclopedias, the Internet, or even the party’s own documents and archives!

The party of 1860 is not the party of 2017.

You may have realized this, dimly, when the Republican Abe Lincoln, for a robust government that federalized laws, that stamped down states’ rights, that brought more people into citizenship and granted them voting rights, that instituted taxes and the supremacy of the federal government, has been degraded, derided, and ignored by the party he helped set up as a national force.

Starting around 1960 the parties changed sides.

The Democrats truly became the party of the people, and the Republicans became the party of white people.

“The Democrats truly became the party of the people, and the Republicans became the party of white people.”

Upwards of 1/3rd of the “white people are actually mixed race. Ever since Johnson said “get those N3$5ls to vote” the white democrats found a way to make people more comfortable in the race system run by the racists.
For any apartheid system to function smoothly you first got to get the people to believe the race system is legit, then make them cmfortable in i. Not comfortable in respect to living standard etc., but comfort in the security of the system. It was the progressive democratic party which has managed to do this, not the republicans. Remember it was a progressive old school democrat that called our former president a “clean black man”…(superior inteligent mulatto).

The other thing too is that remember when mixed race folks wanted their own category on the census in the late 90’s? No more forced stufing into catergories for political tools, like Obama did with new census category (also like most hispanics ID as white but most are mixed ) It was the democrats who fought this, including the Black Caucus, and political A A leaders (a tool of the segregationist political elite). Remember this from 1996? The old democrats did not just go away, they made you comfortable in the system.http://www.utne.com/politics/multiethnicity-eliminating-racial-categories

Ugh? You can’t be serious? The democrats are the party of slavery, segregation and KKK. Progressive democrat “Kill the Indian save the man” has become “Kill the person / child save the democrat version of the Indian”. Democrats make people comfortable in the race system. At least the far right is in your face about it. No freedom in that. Obama was a race system guy just like Trump. I belong to no party, no person will tell me who I am supposed to be. .

Eloquence in public speaking is so rare that I’m moved nearly to tears when I hear it. What a wonderful speech. The conclusion, a quote from Pres. Lincoln, summed up perfectly where we are today and the need for is to stop shouting at each other and sit down and listen to each other. We must find common middle ground to move ahead.

The mayor has it all wrong. There should be slave ship monuments. Fayetteville, NC still has their slave market in the town square for all to see. Zanzibar has a bustling tourist trade of former slaving sites. They are all vivid reminders of the horror, of man’s inhumanity to man. Hiding it erases the memory.

My friends who are black feel sometimes that these kinds of monuments can otherize them, or make them eternal victims.

If we do such a thing, it needs to be done carefully to, in my opinion, express how violent, wicked men used weapons and torture to force ordinary, unsuspecting, and fully human people in Africa to become whipped and beaten enslaved people — but without making some larger statement about white men always being the winners.

We like Joan of Arc because while she was subjugated, she fought back.

So maybe a statue of Robert Smalls is better — a smart man who learned the ways of his enslavers until he found the opportunity to steal a Confederate ship, captain it, and take it to the North to give to the Union.

Those jokers — davis beauregard and lee — were all traitors to these United States. The secessionist states demanded the right to expand slavery into new states in the west and went to war against their northern brothers when they could not prevail in Congress. In doing so they took on a bad venture and lost their slave holding and voting prerogatives. The lost cause is a dead cause.

Dead? The Army and Navy surrendered: the Confederate Government NEVER surrendered, and we were forced against our Will back into a Country we wanted no part of. That is satanic Fascism just like what Nazi Germany did to Poland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia …

I hope to see an Airplane hijacked by Arabs with nobody on board but all of the I.S.I.S. Commanders land right into the Lincoln Memorial … might as well sandblast Mister Lincoln’s ugly pock-marked Face off of Mount Rushmore. You think you can get your Way by posting hateful Filth on social Media? Well, two can play that Game. We can remove all Vestiges of the most despotic, tyrannical, mass-murdering Dictator in North American History: Abraham Lincoln. His Statues and Images need to be removed from Dollars, Coins, Mountains, the Capital, the Capital of the Confederate States of America … might as well erect a Statue to Hitler in Tel Aviv.

Two things. First instead of santizing history leave them there as a reminder and teaching moment of what can go wrong. If you dont, you ae in danger of repeating history. One example When the whole intial compromise with taking the confederate flagg off the state house in SC. There was a wonderful monument to all the contributions for the Black South Carolinians from the begining of the State history. Did you hear the newsever bring that out no. It did not fit their agenda.

It possible to have the same memories by removing them to a museum and removing them from a place of honor.

I’m pretty confident that their presence does not endear them to people who were the subject of their white supremacists views and power.

This is entirely disconnected from what South Carolina may or may not have done in response to removing their sign of treason from the flag pole. That flag was also removed to a museum; if the SC government then also decided to honor the contributions of black South Carolinians, then all the better; if they failed to do so, all the worse; but removing monuments to treason in Louisiana is not dependent upon how South Carolina removed their own monuments to treason.

Rich people owned many slaves; plantations were corporate factories that used human beings as replaceable cogs in a machine that generated comparative billions of dollars in today’s money and created a royal life for a select few. However, the rich could not, on their own, fight a civil war. They had to find some way to get the “poor white trash”, the white people who did not own slaves because they were too poor, to fight a war for them. The rich had to figure out a way to rile up the Southern masses. The ownership of slaves just wasn’t enough, as the poor did not own slaves, and the middle class owned no more than perhaps a kitchen slave or two. It’s true that some non-rich Southerners some hoped that one day they, too, would be rich and own slaves enjoy the regal lifestyle a house full of slaves could afford one, but still, it was not going to be enough to get them to put their lives on the line in defense of the rich plantation owners’ lifestyle.

Something had to be discovered to encourage the patriotic masses to die to maintain other people’s wealthy lifestyle, and “states’ rights” was just the ticket. Corporate plantation owners considered these lower-class white people who carried water for them “useful idiots”. And to this day, useful idiots insist that states’ rights were the cause of the Civil War.

Furl that Banner, for ’tis weary;
Round its staff ’tis drooping dreary;
Furl it, fold it, it is best;
For there’s not a man to wave it,
And there’s not a sword to save it,
And there’s no one left to lave it
In the blood that heroes gave it;
And its foes now scorn and brave it;
Furl it, hide it–let it rest!

Take that banner down! ’tis tattered;
Broken is its shaft and shattered;
And the valiant hosts are scattered
Over whom it floated high.
Oh! ’tis hard for us to fold it;
Hard to think there’s none to hold it;
Hard that those who once unrolled it
Now must furl it with a sigh.

Furl that banner! furl it sadly!
Once ten thousands hailed it gladly.
And ten thousands wildly, madly,
Swore it should forever wave;
Swore that foeman’s sword should never
Hearts like theirs entwined dissever,
Till that flag should float forever
O’er their freedom or their grave!

Furl it! for the hands that grasped it,
And the hearts that fondly clasped it,
Cold and dead are lying low;
And that Banner–it is trailing!
While around it sounds the wailing
Of its people in their woe.

For, though conquered, they adore it!
Love the cold, dead hands that bore it!
Weep for those who fell before it!
Pardon those who trailed and tore it!
But, oh! wildly they deplored it!
Now who furl and fold it so.

Furl that Banner! True, ’tis gory,
Yet ’tis wreathed around with glory,
And ’twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust;
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages–
Furl its folds though now we must.

Furl that banner, softly, slowly!
Treat it gently–it is holy–
For it droops above the dead.
Touch it not–unfold it never,
Let it droop there, furled forever,
For its people’s hopes are dead!

Robert E. Lee wasn’t a slaver. He was opposed to slavery (writings to his wife). His wife and mother in law started a school for black children at Arlington House. His only experience with slavery was being named executor to his father-in-laws estate who did own slaves, and he followed the requirements of the will in freeing those slaves. He was against secession. But he was also a son of Virginia. So he fought for Virginia. And after he surrendered his sword, he was an advocate for reunification, supported reconstruction and called out Southern leaders that opposed these things. He became president of Washington College and expelled students for acts of violence against blacks. Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. Of His Time.

You have proven yourself either a masterful Liar bent on propogating bigoted, prejudiced, racist, anti-Southern Filth, or you are just a left-wing Looney with far-right Fascism imbedded in your Lunacy of loving the U.S.A. but hating the Southern Section of the U.S.A. You are a hate-filled, vitriolic, bitter, mean-spirited Bigot who thinks he can love the whole of America and still hate the South. If you are anti-Southern then YOU, Sir are anti-American. Robert E. Lee did not defend Slavery. He encouraged an Act of Confederate Congress to emancipate one hundred eighty-eight thousand Slaves in exchange for Enlistment in the Army of Northern Virginia. It was granted and President Davis signed it into law. Three Weeks into their training, General Lee surrendered, and the Federals did absolutely nothing to give them any Money, Food, Clothing, Housing, Shelter, or even Shoes. They were abandoned by the Unionists because they sided with … oh, how did you put it, the wrong side? If the War had lasted even six more Months, Legislation was in the works for a Confederate Army in the Trans-Mississippi Department, the Army of Tennessee, and the Army of Northern Virginia of two million two hundred thousand freed Slaves and Black Southrons who had been free their whole Lives, and the Confederacy would have been Slave-free before the U.S., since Lincoln protected Slavery up north. You are an Idiot. I read “Jefferson Davis: Confederate President” by Herman Hattaway and Richard E. Beringer. I also read “Confederate Emancipation”, another fine Book. You must not read too many politically incorrect Books that teach the WHOLE Truth. You are a Bigot. You hate the South … yet you claim to be a Patriot? You make me nauseas …. Damn Yankees such as yourself are what is wrong with America. What have you done in this entire Thread to denounce the Farmers, Businessmen, and industrial Managers who horde illegal Aliens in this Country forcing them to work at fifty Cents an Hour after charging them two hundred fifty thousand Dollars to smuggle them and their Families in and making little Kids work sixteen Hour Shifts? What have you done to denounce the Southeast Asian sex Slaves and Mexican sex Slaves and human trafficking Victims? You are absolutely obsessed with Slavery that happened in a foreign Country for four Years a hundred fifty-seven Years ago, yet to PURPOSEFULLY ignore it in the United States and the American-British Colonies for Hundreds and Hundreds of Years. You also ignore the Fact that if there were no Slaves in Africa, we never would have gotten them in America through the Middle Passage. You also ignore that the vast Majority of Slaves were bought by damn Yankees in New York City, Boston, Hartford, Providence, Dover, and sold to Southrons for an ENOURMOUS Profit, and then the damn Yankees wanted to end Slavery out of Spite and not pay the Southrons their Money back, so the Damn Yankees stay rich, the Southrons are bankrupted, and the Yankees feign Ignorance on the Matter falsely claiming moral High Grounds. I want to puke right now at your sanctimonius, self-righteous, holier-than-thou Attitude. Slavery existed in the Book of Genesis, the Jewish Israelites who were Slaves in Egypt owned Slaves themselves, Slavery exists in Uganda, Africa, China, North Korea, Southeast Asian, Central and South America, and even the U.S.A. TODAY! And you do not condemn it??? You are worse than a Slave Owner. You are lower than the Abolitionists that wanted to end Slavery but still believed Blacks were inferior to Whites like Julia War Howe. Your pontificating, snobbish, uptight, snot-nosed Propaganda is absolutely Satanic. You do not care about Slaves today … and I do not think you care about the dead Slaves in the United States of America. You only care about one Generation of Slaves in a Nation that is defunct, a foreign Nation on this Continent, that was in the quick Process of legally and permanently ending Slavery for all time on their OWN Terms without outside Interference from the GOD-Damned Yankees and yet you sit up there on your Pedestal like your are King $£!t and Lord of History when you are nothing but vitriolic, Hate-Monger full of Caustic, Lye, Piss, and Vinegar.

You are lower than a Cockroach. I have more Respect for my Cat’s used Litter than I do damn Yankees such as yourself. I want to puke right now just listening to your Bigotry, Prejudice, and Hate. You pretend a lot about loving Black “Brothers and Sisters” but are you denouncing Slavery in Africa today? NO! Because you do not care about Slavery today! You are a flaming Hypocrite and you should take a Trip to Uganda and do some Missionary Work to save your worthless Excuse for a Soul.

Do you drink a lot before you launch yourself at your keyboard? Just thinking about “…the Fact that if there were no Slaves in Africa, we never would have gotten them in America through the Middle Passage.” Have you convinced yourself that the slave trade was perpetuated only on human beings who were already enslaved? (And that somehow that makes it better?) You need to read up: slavery certainly existed in Africa, but countless free men and women were captured into the slave trade who were not slaves before. Not to mention children who were born slaves, becoming someone else’s property virtually in the womb. You are a confused individual with a curious grasp of historical perspective.

Having read the eloquence of Mayor Landrieu’s address and of the lines he quoted from an equally reasoned speech by Barack Obama, I am left with the uncharitable, but entirely valid thought, that such reasoned and intelligent eloquence, on *any* subject is quite beyond the present occupant of the Oval Office.

My god! Reading this string is exhausting! The South and Southerns won’t ever full admit their ancestors past transgressions and until they do, Blacks, minorities and white progressives will not and should not give them a pass. We as a country can not move forward until we recognize our treacherous, murderous pass. You can argue, most of the destruction in today’s cities is directly due to the US perpetuating and not ever coming to grips with its past. Stephen Matlock, I applaud you for fighting the good fight but I fear you are Sisyphus in this endeavor. As a Creole and son of LA, I hope the removal of these statues is a positive step in healing this State and our country! “A great nation does not hide its history, it faces its flaws and corrects them” – G.W. Bush

Thanks for your kind comment, David Garrett, but I’m good with opposing this nonsense.

I’m not worried about changing the mind of a racist or white supremacist. They were not convinced by reason to be racist or white supremacist, and they cannot be convinced out of their convictions.

I respond and post because there are those who just do not know enough, or who look for people to speak up and help them in their own discovery.

I’ve seen it where the crowd is waiting for someone to spark the right thing, even in a small action, and then the crowd breaks to contribute to everyone doing the right thing.

So my speaking up and opposing racists and white supremacists isn’t really for them. It’s for me–my integrity is at stake–and for my friends and my family who are the targets of their attacks, and for my fellow Americans who would do more and act more if they get that initial start-up spark.

It’s a long, hard, ugly road to overthrow white supremacy. It is not guaranteed to succeed.

Revisionist history is not the answer! Erasing history hides what the US civil war was about. These monuments are about military leaders who fought for the South. Most were West Point graduates who were commanders in the Mexican American War and later aligned themselves with the southern states they were from when civil war broke out.
This political correctness is a form of censorship. In order to have a free society, you must tolerate the very worse in order to have the very best. Censorship is not the answer!

There’s a difference between revisionism, and choosing not to celebrate aspects of history. You don’t keep mementoes on show that call to mind people who have grievously wronged you. You keep positive, encouraging memories that make you hopeful and grateful. There is a difference between the macro lessons of history, and the micro feelings of the individual in the everyday. An unwelcome reference can live forever in a history book. It doesn’t also need to be forced upon the individual who resents it every day in the street.

But I will point out that if your white fragility is so tender that you must have statues of national traitors erected in your cities even though their cause exploded and their rebellion failed, then you might want to rethink why it is such an inglorious past is something you need to celebrate–and why it is you do not find reasons other than treason and white slavers to remind you of the past.

The “Chocolate City” remark was fine, though. Most people wouldn’t be that overt.

Exactly… there is a difference between taking the statues down that memorialize the distasteful history that people are forced to see everyday symbolizing bigotry and hatred. Rather to put them in a museum and look at them as history construct that society has moved past. Another quote from the speech that I liked, “We justify our silence and inaction by manufacturing noble courses that marinate in historical denial” – M. Landrieus

The telling point for me is that many of these white men who demand to have statues to honor their imagined past, no matter the pain they cause their fellow Americans who are people of color or even descendants of the enslaved owned by these men memorialized in statues are angrily denouncing Sherman and others as “violators” — would they want statues to Sherman, et al., to be placed above them?

I am not from New Orleans, or even the south, but this speech resonated with me. It is so well put. It is not about forgetting the history or erasing it, it is about recognizing what was wrong and making an attempt to heal so many years of inequality and hate.

I believe an honest review of a nuanced history will affirm both that slavery was an essential cause of the War, and that the war was also about tariffs.

The seeds for the war were sown in the Constitutional Convention, where seemingly irreconcilable differences erupted time and time again between the “Eastern States”–primarily shipping and manufacturing states in the North–and the “Southern States” tending to be smaller population, but larger geographical states in the South. This was primarily due to the availability of land available for agriculture.

From the beginning of the colonies, people worked hard to find products that could be sold from the New World to Europe. Fish was also abundant in the North Sea, lumber was expensive to transport, and nearly all the manufacturers were in Europe. Ships could be built where the timber was abundant, however, and trading was available to anyone. Agriculture was the obvious answer for the South, while shipping was apparent for the North. Once tobacco and cotton were discovered and developed, the large plantations of the South had a ready market for their goods.

However, it was the maritime states in the North that possessed most of the ships that transported these products. So the Southern states had a vested interest in low tariffs (because they imported and exported nearly everything, either to Europe, the Caribbean, or to the Northern states). They also greatly preferred competitive shipping so that they could negotiate the best rates to ship their products.

This meant that England, the undisputed ruler of the seas, was directly competing with shippers from the Northern states for southern business, and that Spain and France were hungrily waiting in the wings to snatch any available market for their own shipping interests. Part of the discord that lead to the conclusion that the Articles of Confederation were simply inadequate came in that a small and weak Federal government was unable to either guarantee the safety of the states, or to ensure that the individual states lived up to the treaties signed by the United States of America.

So the Northern states wanted high tariffs for international trade, but low tariffs for intra-national trade. This meant to the Southern plantations, however, that the available American shippers could raise their rates to match the rates + tariffs paid to the English merchants. This allowed the Northern States to get richer while the Southern States grew poorer. The Southern states preferred low tariffs so that their products could be even more competitive in European markets while it became cheaper to import European goods than to buy those made in the Northern States.

On top of all of this there was the issue of the Mississippi River. The Southern States wanted to bargain away maritime rights and treaties to secure open access to the Mississippi River, because there were waves of new settlers moving West from the Southern States. Some states were even willing to sign individual treaties to prefer Spanish and French shipping over American shipping to secure access to the Mississippi River, and thus to promote the rapid growth of the Southern states.

Predictably, the Northern States much preferred waiting for 10 or 20 years to secure Mississippi rights in exchange for maritime benefits right away. They had been protected by England and her treaties (and the English navy) until the end of the Revolutionary war. Now their ships became relatively easy pickings for everyone, especially the English. They reasoned that with a couple of decades to develop, they could stand on their own two legs in competition internationally, but feared that without protection by treaty now their livelihoods would be threatened.

This was the main fuel of the War of 1812, as much as the desire to conquer Canada to complete the New World’s emancipation from the English and French.

None of these issues were settled by the new Constitution, nor did they go away on their own.

Slavery became a critical symbol of these differences between the interests of the North and the South, exactly because slaves were required for Southern agriculture, but not for Northern manufacturing and shipping.

Here is the big dilemma: More sparsely populated Southern states (and most expected a huge population boom in the early 1800s) wanted their slave populations counted for the purpose of the new federal legislature (and only the House of Representatives was elected by the people) and opposed any representative body that was based on population. The Northern States opposed a legislature with a fixed number of members from each state, regardless of size, because the Southern States outnumbered them, even though they had smaller populations).

So the Northern States wanted the House of Representatives, while the Southern States wanted the Senate. They got both.

Then the question became “do we count population, or only voters?”

Most of the farmers in the North were small but there were many more of them. The plantation owners in the South were influential, but were grossly outnumbered by the slaves. The Northern States thought they had the South in a bind–do you want to be democratic or not? but the Southern States refused to agree to any Constitution that would give up power to the North to negotiate foreign treaties and to set tariff rates.

Finally, the incredibly awful solution of counting each man of color as 3/5 of a white man, while still denying them the vote–don’t forget that women of all colors were prevented from voting; they, after all “are prone to hysteria.”

This was a cobbled-together solution that simply could not work in the long run. It was indefensible on just about any grounds. It also didn’t address the other economic issues.

The North were successful in outmaneuvering the South in capitalizing on this disparity–upon which they had relied a few decades earlier–and proposing emancipation of the slaves. This would, they believed, lead to a breakup of the large Southern plantations and thus win the economic war. The North and its maritime industries would prevail.

The South, for mixed motives including a desperate scramble for intellectual, moral and theological justification for slavery (why would Philemon be in the Bible if God did not sanction slavery?) not primarily because they wanted to oppress people of color–after all, non-white folks in the North were hardly better off–but because it was the only route they saw to survival as states equal to those in the North.

As time went on, slavery became less of an economic issue and more of a moral issue. That hardly made things any easier.

A string of presidents, culminating in Buchanan, a Northern politician who sympathized with the South and made enemies on both sides, continued to make the unsolved problem worse and worse. By the time Lincoln was elected, it was the very act of the presidential election that proved to be the last straw.

The North usually wasn’t so much concerned about whether the South would stay in the Union, as they feared that an independent South, driven by the need for new trade agreements, would become closer and closer to some European power, eventually becoming a new European colony.

Which is why Lincoln framed his speeches in terms of not only “preserving the Union” but also “demonstrating that this experiment, a democratic form of government, could survive.” All the political scientists in Europe were, all along, predicting the eminent demise of the US, because no republic could ever keep the many separate sides with competing interests united without the power of a monarchy.

So the Civil War is complicated. It is both “about slavery” and “about economics.” The real reason for the war in 1860 was that the real issues had not been solved at any time earlier.

It was an interesting speech, one that I am not completely in agreement with. I view this statue issue much in the same way I do the flag issue, even more interesting are the responses. Both sides of the issue quickly take defensive or offensive positions with no middle ground allowed, I feel that this is due to the fact that most people interested in the issue are emotionally or ideologically engaged with the issue. I was never brought up one way or the other, but was allowed to read and decide the issue for myself. My family didn’t really know that much about which side the family was on, turns out one side with for the confederacy the other the union. I feel that a quote by American Civil Liberties union attorney William Simpson, makes a great point, and one I follow. “If you need to express pride in your southern heritage is worth hurting those who are offended by the flag, then do what you must. But at the same time ry to see why the message you intend to send is not always the one that is received. On the other hand, those offended by the flag to see that the Confederate flag means many different things to many different people. Recognize that the flag has significance beyond racism. Try to understand that the message you receive when you see the flag may not be the message the person displaying it intends to send.” If everyone could agree on this point then what may be achieved is mutual tolerance and perhaps even mutual understanding might take place. Removing them has done nothing to alter that thinking process of us against them mentality I read on all to many of the responses.

Flags and monuments may have meaning beyond racism for some people so if you personally want to fly a confederate battle flag from the bed of your truck or put one up in your window go right ahead. By that same token if you’d like to open a museum and display these statues as in a historical context then go right ahead.

To suggest that it is harmless to allow a confederate flag to be flown by our current government or to suggest that allowing statues to sit on public land, be maintained by public money, and be memorialized for all the public to look upon with reverence however is absolutely naive. It is not harmless. It sends the absolutely wrong signal and is deeply hurtful and offensive. If it’s a symbol of history and heritage for you then put it where it belongs. In a museum.

There’s a big difference between the government flying flags and maintaining monuments and private citizens doing it. I personally would not because I do think it’s offensive but free speech covers offensive statements; say and do what you please! The government represents all of us though; so they do not need to be in the business of flying flags or maintaining monuments that are so deeply offensive (and rightly so) to citizens of our nation.

This must be the latest “gotcha!” meme on the right. It’s tiresome to continually refute it to people who don’t listen, but here goes:

a. The Buddha statues destroyed by ISIS were not “historical landmarks.” They were objects of religious veneration, and represent religious ideations. Blowing them up was desecration of a religion.
b. The monuments in NOLA are not “historical landmarks” either. They are examples of a fictive past, no better than a statue to The Little Mermaid, except to a much crueler and more wicked story where white slavers hoodwinked willing conspirators to fight for the right to own black human beings as little more than flesh-based dishwashers and harvesters. Taking them down is not blowing them up, and removing them is simply removing a false past from public honor.

We have our quaint false stories of neutral or charming events. Geo. Washington and the cherry tree, for example.

But these monuments aren’t to a quaint, imagined past. They are to declare as true that white supremacy is worth celebrating and honoring, and that black chattel slavery is worth defending.

I am over 82 years old and lived on a farm in South Carolina until I attended Emory University in Atlanta. Nobody ever called Prof ( A black man who obviously had been a slave) a slave. Having no where to go and perhaps some mental problems, he was allowed to stay at the family house and provided for until his death. My uncle cared for a four year old black child after he was found sitting on the side of the road near the family’s farm. The black child’s family had abandoned him during the night as they left trying to find a better share-cropping experience elsewhere – supposedly because the car was not large enough to carry everyone as they moved. This child remained living in my uncle’s house until he was old enough to start a business on his own. Many such stories abound and the reason I list them now is to indicate how tough it was to live in the South after the Civil War. Imagine the thousands of slaves who were “freed” with no where to go and no way to support themselves. I am sure there were many lives lived in hell with little support from any source. Despite the problems and much distrust between the races, there were also many instances of respect and help from former slave owners. I am not trying to condone slavery – it had to be terrible. If I remember correctly, one of the main purposes of the war was to hurt the southland to the point that the South could never start another war. Whites were in dire straits after the war also. In fact many of their problems lasted until WW2. I know most northerners believe he South should have integrated much earlier than it did but I don’t believe they had any idea of what that meant. Most cities up north maintained communities of different nationalities and races and yet, they were never “forced” to integrate. They never had a problem similar to the South. My senior year in high school contained approximately seventy five (75) students in four grades; the “all-black” high school contained approximately four hundred (400) students. Integration is still in progress but finally showing signs of improvement. I found some of the comments above new to me that some states passed laws that blacks could not live in those Northern states after the Civil Was. What’s the bottom line? Stop grandstanding and pointing fingers at others now. Blacks still have a hard time getting jobs because of poor education and social skills. I have no problem with helping our citizens in need but we cannot keep giving everting free to those in need without requiring some responsibility in return. Let’s stop trying to find fault with history and start looking for solutions such that everyone is capable of caring for themselves. Take down the statures, do whatever that will ease the pain of the past but require some work and effort from those who take the gifts from government with only a vote in return.

When will folks wake up to the current American holocaust: the aborting of African American babies? About 34% of all abortions are performed on 11% of our population, African American women. There are no physical monuments to remove but Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United states, receives hundreds of millions our federal tax dollars. The argument that these dollars do not go toward abortions is without merit as money is fungible.

The mayor of New Orleans needs a history lesson. I simply refer him to Lincoln’s own words, written to Horace Greeley on 22 August 1862 when asked about the purpose of the war.

“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be the Union as it was. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored rave, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views.”

This quote is well known yet often discounted by the less informed, saying Lincoln’s thinking evolved, changing his mind when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation after the Battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862.

Well, dear readers, please keep an open mind and contemplate Lincoln’s words to former Wisconsin governor Alexander Randall, visiting him in the White House in August 1864, two years after his words to Greeley.

“My enemies say I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. It is and will be carried on so long as I am President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done. Freedom has given us the control of 200,000 able bodied men, born & raised on southern soil. It will give us more yet…My enemies condemn my emancipation policy. Let them prove by the history of this war, that we can restore the Union without it.”

And if you doubt the above of Lincoln to Randall quote, it’s carved in stone….in the visitor’s gallery in the lower level of the Lincoln Memorial!

No one who is educated says that the American Civil War resulted in a response by the North after attack by the South because the North wanted to abolish slavery.

Lincoln said this, many times. His goal was to preserve the Union. He evolved over time to see the necessity of extirpating black chattel slavery as part of his desire to preserve the Union, and he evolved in his thinking about black humans to negotiate an admission of their humanity. The Corwin Amendment would have blocked changes that the 13th Amendment enforced.

This is actually taught by historians who teach and research history.

But slavery is the primary cause of the American Civil War, because the South wanted to preserve eternally the position of white slavers and the position of black chattel slaves. Not only preserve, but extend across the South, Southwest, and into California. Down to Mexico. Into the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

The South/Confederacy was founded upon the principles of white supremacy and black chattel slavery. Absent humans owned by white slavers, forced to work for free, until they wore out or became difficult, there would be no American Civil War because there would have been a free class of Americans of all colors who could work and be paid for their work, live as free men and women and not as forced servants, marry and raise their families without their masters taking their women and then disowning their half-white children.

This isn’t even disputed. Give me a scenario that the South would have existed in any form like the Confederacy or even an antebellum South without black chattel slavery.

It doesn’t exist.

Lincoln may not have had slavery in mind as his central reason when he engaged all the forces of the North to fight to preserve the Union, but it was in his mind, and became an increasingly more important part of the battle.

And by incorporating the extirpation of the white slaver society and the freedom of black chattel slaves to become free and independent citizens of the United States (yay 14th Amendment and all your hidden effects of incorporating federal rights and laws into states!), Lincoln made the fight to preserve the Union, a political and military effort, into a fight that also included the necessity of destroying the white slaver social and political structure, a moral and spiritual effort.

Making the American Civil War only about slavery is not correct, but avoiding the very real fact that the war started because of white slavers and their attempts to continue their white slaver society, and the war was transformed by incorporating the elimination of slavery is also not correct.

Thank God Lincoln in his halting, slow, muddled ways eventually saw fit to make the morality of the American Civil War turn on freeing people from their bondage.

Sorry to disappoint, fellow responder, but there is only one cause to all wars. D.W. Griffith “Illustrated” it in 1916 with his movie Intolerance. That’s right, the cause of all wars is intolerance of our differences. And in the case of our American less-than-civil Civil War, the real questions is not what…but who lead us down this bloody path. Ideas do not fight wars…people do. So who pushed and agitated both North and South into conflict? Don’t believe this? Then why is it only Haiti and our country were the only people who resorted to war to “end slavery” in the Western Hemisphere? All the rest got rid of slavery with out going to war with Brazil finally ending slavery in 1888!

Name the agitators (both North and South!) and that will get you a bit closer to placing blame…if you are in the blame business. Of course some people bring preconceived bias to this….so just ponder a few questions…the answers might confront those biases. (And I would suggest this is the problem with the Mayor in N.O.)

Can you name the only civil war general who founded, funded and taught a slave Sunday School? Can you name the only enlisted man, Blue or Gray, who has a monument to his battlefield valor in the North and the South…which means the enemy is honoring the other side? And can you name the last President of the United States who owned someone?

I FOUND THIS SPEECH UNDER THE TWITTER COMMENT “1 OF THE MOST HONEST SPEECHES ON RACE GIVEN BY A WHITE SOUTHERN POL”. VERY DISHEARTENING TO HEAR RACE STILL BEING USED TO STEREOTYPE WHAT WE SHOULD (OR SHOULD NOT) BE HEARING FROM PEOPLE OF CERTAIN COLOR. RACIAL PROFILING AND STEROTYPES AREN’T PRODUCTS OF ANY ONE RACE AND NO RACE SHOULD BE USING THEM. LET’S ALL MOVE FORWARD. TODAY’S A GOOD DAY TO START. THANK YOU, MAYOR LANDRIEU, FOR YOUR POWERFUL AND POSITIVE SPEECH. IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING AND WAS SIMPLY INSPIRING. I FEEL IT’LL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS IMPORTANT A MILESTONE SPEECH AS WAS KING’S I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH, AS IT EXPRESSES A SHINING HOPE FOR THE FUTURE. VERY MOVING FOR ME.

Some one tell this idiot and his arrogant followings that the north kept their slaves beyond the emancipation proclamation. That confederate flag was created for states rights and that lincoln only freed the slaves in the rebellious states to fight in a war that they had been back handed at even as they dominated their successors economically, militarily, as well as financially. These Democrats are of the same mentality that will give the south all its motivations to dissolve this country that no longer wishes to stay united. With its forcing of immorality of unGodly proportion . It give confirmation to the valiant and faithful men good and bad believers to united to do one thing. Save what’s left of God’s country. Southern man dont need them round anyhow. Teaching our children the truth and what is right will preserve and with God’s mighty hand always and perpetually prevail.

Monuments should have never been put up to people that tried to lead a rebellion…If we had lost the Revolutionary war in 1776 do you think there would statues of Washington all over the place and city named Washington? I don’t think so. I was silly they were ever erected in the first place. The people were committing Treason and the south erected statues to them. If a Far Right or Left group staged a Coup, and failed would we allow monuments to be erected in their honor? I hope not. They never should have been put up in they first place.

This is nothing but horseshit , speak as proper as you like , this is an exceptional example of fucking idiots trying to make things sound right and justify something that is wrong… they’ve been up all these years so why now ?… and as far as slaves, everyone owned them back then, what you don’t hear is their own people sold them into slavery … you can’t rewrite history to your liking , there were blacks and the Indians fighting on both sides in the war … there is no one alive today that was alive back then … racism is alive and well thanks to the black man and Obama … anyone who agrees with this is an ignorant fool …

Mitch Landrieu is a diabolical politician who destroyed four American historical monuments, without the consent of his constituents–then delivered an unspeakably dishonest speech, which his constituents were not even allowed to hear.

Grandstanding hypocritical a.s.s. Remove some old generals monuments but leave intact the statute and the main named square of the individual responsible for personally directing the extermination of the Creek, Seminole and Cherokee tribes, the man who created the Bataan Death March of the 19th century, the Trail of Tears, that bastard, Andrew Jackson.

Unfortunately, at the rate we’re going with all this politically correct stuff, there will be groups that want to erase any memory of the United States in a few hundred years. After all, the United States embraced slavery from even before the beginnings of the republic. The Civil War righted wrongs in which both the United States and Confederate States were complicit. It seems to me that Civil War monuments are reminders that even gallant men (and women) can be on the wrong side of history. So what’s the plan for replacing these object lessons in American history??

In the same way we learned the lessons of WWII by not erecting statues of Hitler (evil, wicked man) or Rommel (serving evil, good general).

Somehow, even after tearing down the Berlin Wall, we still remember our history.

We don’t need literal fantasy erected in order to remember factual history. These monuments that honor fake history and fake accomplishments should be taken down and put into museums or melted down into teaspoons.

Except that one statue of the golden rebel on his horse. You can leave that one up. It’s a good reminder of the need for people to fantasize about an imaginary past.

That was wonderfully done – “politically correct” substituting for “actually telling the truth” and the elision of ‘both the US and the CSA were complicit,” avoiding the hard truth of treason and rebellion, and “wrong side of history” substituting for “men fought knowingly for the rebellious, rump government established primary on the demand for white men (and women) to own black men, women, and children in perpetuity.

I appreciate all of his comments, except one. I’m overwhelmed by the irony of him quoting George W. Bush, a war criminal who lied us into invading Iraq, responsible for at least hundreds of thousands of deaths and the destruction of innocent people’s homes and resources, at the cost of over $1 trillion paid for by American taxpayers. If our country were to truly face its flaws and correct them, politicians who abuse power, knowingly lie us into invading other countries, committing crimes against our country and crimes against humanity, would be held accountable for those crimes.

Wow! This is a powerful piece. Being from the North we are taught about the underground railroad and all the people that fought and could have lost their lives saving and freeing people. This article is amazing and should be shared

As one who feels strongly about preserving history, it bothers me to see symbols of history obliterated. I know that history cannot be erased and we must not forget what happened. However, it is time to move on. These monuments are disturbing to our many of our citizens and for that reason they must be removed. Many of them were erected by the sons and grandsons of Confederate soldiers around the turn of the century and fueled by a passion for what was “lost”. This is understandable to some degree. Sadly, some monuments were erected at later dates as a symbol of white dominance. This is not what we are striving to be as a nation. I do think everyone of every color should watch the Ken Burns Civil War series. The Civil War was a terrible conflict and many young men died for a cause that was based on racism. Many of those young Confederate men who died possessed little understanding of the issues. The leaders of the South, however, were clear in their intent. Landrieu’s speech was eloquent.

I’m OK with removing them. They don’t have to all be destroyed. Some can be moved into museums. But there is almost a direct 1:1 mapping of places where black Americans live and where the monuments/statues are erected. (Some were specifically erected in majority black counties.) They were designed to intimidate black Americans, not reveal history, and indeed the story they tell is a fantasy of white supremacy.

The statues don’t represent history in any way, except that the names are accurate.

There never was a honorable Confederacy, and there never were honorable men serving an honorable cause. It was a rebellion of traitorous governments attempting to maintain and extend black chattel slavery, and its extirpation was just.

Wrecking balls should be used to destroy the statues/monuments from all public places. They are like swastikas – horrible hateful images that only appeal to backwards extremists who don’t know which way is up. Shame on those who want to glorify terribly confused & misguided people from the past.

Not that anyone is going to read this but– Mr. Landrieu’s actions are political and he may even being positioning himself for higher office and this is a path to do so. Maybe he is doing it for the reasons he states and maybe its both. I am from the South (Alabama) and was raised on the greatness of Gen. Lee and others as were most of the people I grew up with. I went to college and graduated twice and my perspective has matured somewhat. While the Confederate government existed to protect the large plantations and the entire system that had been in existence before we were a country; there are some facts that the majority of people on both sides of the issue do not consider. The majority of soldiers in the Confederate army were conscripts or what we would consider drafted today. Yes, between April 1861 and April 1862 the Confederate government relied on volunteers to fill the ranks. But the volunteer ranks began to wain due to battlefield losses and general enthusiasm for the war as a whole. After the battle of Shiloh, the Confederate government passed the first Conscription Act, which did two very important things. First, it forced all white males into the Confederate army; a rather centralized act for a government bent on states rights. Secondly, if allowed the well to do plantation owners and their sons to skip service in the army. Read Sam Watkins’s book if you like, it’s a great read anyway. Now to the other side- The mayor and people that think like him have a drought of political ideas. The majority of sane people (north and south) could care less about the war and care more about who is going to win, Alabama or Ohio State, during a football game. However we Southerner’s, including myself, love a good fight. The battles that were fought are what intrigue us the most. Don’t believe it, the National Park Service realized this almost 20 years ago and started to institute new programming. Gen. Lee was a great man and a great commander and nothing will take away from that. It’s a free country and people can raise money for monuments of their choice or continue what they are doing and watch football and drink beer. (I have done both) As for treason, to my knowledge the only person hanged was the guy over Andersonville prison down in Georgia. Had President Davis, Gen. Lee or my favorite Captain Raphael Semmes or any others actually committed treason; why were there no trials and no mass executions. Read the history on that and while your at it read some Thomas Jefferson to find the answer. As far as the statues being removed– it is wrong but popular. Maybe we can have some statues of Al Sharpton or some of the black lives matter folks put up. Don’t worry– nobody is really watching and in a couple of months all of us, black and white, can get back to what matters to us really. Football

So you’d be in favor of changing the name of Mt. Hood out in Oregon? And Mt. Saint Helens in Washington? Do you know whom they are named after?

And regarding your denigration of Robert E. Lee, do you realize he never bought anyone? He inherited slaves via his wife’s father. But can you name the last United States President who did purchase someone? The man on the $50 bill. (Check William McFeeley’s Pulitzer Prize winning bio of Grant, pp. 62-3!) And perhaps, if you are capable of keeping an open mind on such matters, you might consider the writings of another Civil War author regarding Lee.
“Upon Lincoln’s call to arms to coerce the seceding states, Virginia made without hesitation the choice which she was so heroically to sustain. She would not fight on the issue of slavery, but stood firm on the constitutional ground that every state in the Union enjoyed sovereign rights. On this principle Virginians denied the claim of the Federal Government to exercise coercion. By eighty-eight votes to fifty-five, the Virginia Convention in Richmond refused to allow the state militia to respond to Lincoln’s call.Virginia seceded from the Union and placed her entire military forces at the disposal of the Confederacy. This decided the conduct of one of the noblest Americans who ever lived, and one of the greatest captains known in the annals of war.”

“..one of the noblest Americans who every lived…” I would say that’s about the highest praise one might get, especially when it comes for the pen of the man who let the world in defeating Nazism: Sir Winston Churchill
“The American Civil War,” p. 39.

//So you’d be in favor of changing the name of Mt. Hood out in Oregon? And Mt. Saint Helens in Washington? Do you know whom they are named after?//

If they are named after white men, why not revert them to their original names that the indigenous named them? That would resolve any difficulties about naming.

Mount Hood, called Wy’east by the Multnomah tribe, is a potentially active stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc of northern Oregon.

Mount St. Helens or Louwala-Clough (known as Lawetlat’la to the indigenous Cowlitz people, and Loowit to the Klickitat) is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington

//And regarding your denigration of Robert E. Lee, do you realize he never bought anyone? He inherited slaves via his wife’s father.//

I don’t believe I accused RELee the traitor of anything more than being traitor. My disgust with him is that he led men into battle in treason that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 men and the deaths of 700,000 civilians through terror and starvation, as well as the destruction of the Southern economy and infrastructure. He didn’t own slaves? Good for him. He’s still the military leader of the rebellion, and he himself did not want statues erected to him. Should you want to honor RELee, then do what he asks and remove his monuments, including Stone Mountain. I would invest in the dynamite myself.

//But can you name the last United States President who did purchase someone? The man on the $50 bill. (Check William McFeeley’s Pulitzer Prize winning bio of Grant, pp. 62-3!) //

Pshaw, I already am fully aware of this. Grant was also a woefully underprepared and unqualified president. You don’t need to come after me on that.

//And perhaps, if you are capable of keeping an open mind on such matters, you might consider the writings of another Civil War author regarding Lee.
“Upon Lincoln’s call to arms to coerce the seceding states, Virginia made without hesitation the choice which she was so heroically to sustain. She would not fight on the issue of slavery, but stood firm on the constitutional ground that every state in the Union enjoyed sovereign rights. On this principle Virginians denied the claim of the Federal Government to exercise coercion. By eighty-eight votes to fifty-five, the Virginia Convention in Richmond refused to allow the state militia to respond to Lincoln’s call.Virginia seceded from the Union and placed her entire military forces at the disposal of the Confederacy. This decided the conduct of one of the noblest Americans who ever lived, and one of the greatest captains known in the annals of war.”

“..one of the noblest Americans who every lived…” I would say that’s about the highest praise one might get, especially when it comes for the pen of the man who let the world in defeating Nazism: Sir Winston Churchill
“The American Civil War,” p. 39.//

Authorship is irrelevant to me. Churchill had a good turn of phrase. He was still tragically wrong about his military judgments, and sometimes said things that were simply not true. He did a great job in WWII in managing to keep Britain from being overrun, but he failed to consider the nationalist sentiments of the people of the Empire. He also wanted to continue WWII by invading and conquering Russia, IIRC.

I don’t care about whether some Great Man said something about RELee.

I look at what RELee did in leading treason, I look at what he did in surrendering at Appomattox. I look at what he did in retirement, in his wish to have no memorials.

And I look at Arlington, the mass grave of soldiers, many of them put there by his treason.

Mr. Matlock, regarding Gen. R. E. Lee, you mentioned “I look at what he did in surrendering at Appomattox.” I wonder if you really know the importance of what you said there? Based on your previous response, you seem to already have your mind made up on Lee….and yet as I learned early in life, “he/she who cannot be counseled, cannot be helped.” So I address my comments regarding your diatribe on Winston Churchill and Robert. E. Lee to those other readers who are following our conversation. (BTW, Mt. Hood was named for British Admiral Samuel Hood who fought to crush our American Revolution. Mt. St. Helens was likewise named for British Diplomat Lord St. Helens who served George III during the Revolution. Should we consider removing these British enemies’ names from two of our most prominent volcanoes? But l digress…)

One Sunday morning, April 9, 1865, as Grant’s army tightened its encirclement of Lee’s battered army around Appomattox, Gen. Edward Porter Alexander spotted Lee on a rise about two miles from the county seat. Noted Alexander in his memoir published years later, “As I came up he called to me, & walking off to a clean oak log from which the bark had been recently stripped, he sat down & said, “Well, here we are at Appomattox, & there seems to be a considerable force in front us. Now, what shall we have to do today?”
Alexander urged Lee to exploit “any chance to cut our way through…” but the Confederate commander saw no hope in that. “Well, Sir,” replied Alexander, “we have only two alternatives to choose from. We must either surrender, or, the army maybe be ordered to scatter in the woods & bushes…”
“What would you hope to accomplish by that?” asked Lee.
“If there is any hope for the Confederacy it is in delay,” replied Alexander, believing he had his commander’s full attention. “For if the Army of Northern Va. surrenders, every other army will surrender as fast as the news reaches it. For it is the morale of this army which has supported the whole Confederacy.”
Spelling out specifics state by state, Alexander remembered his remarks to Lee “wound up to a pitch of feeling I could scarcely control….”
“…if there is no hope, & no terms possible, & if this is just the end, & the wreck of all things, there is still one thing that the men who have fought under you for four years now have the right to ask you. You don’t care for military fame & glory, but we are proud of your name & record & the record of this army. We want to leave it to our children. Its last hour has come and a little blood more or less now makes no difference. And the men that have fought under you for four years have got the right to ask you to spare us the mortification of having to ask Grant for terms & have him reply ‘Unconditional Surrender.’ They call him that: U. S. Unconditional Surrender Grant. General, spare us the mortification of having you receive that reply.”

Looking back on this moment years later, Alexander noted, “Usually I stood very much in awe of Gen. Lee but now I was wrought up & words came to me as never before. As I made my points they seemed to be unanswerable. At the end when I made, on top of all my good logic, an appeal that I knew the soldier in him must respond to, I believed firmly that I had him, & he would do it.”
Lee had listened, perhaps pondering one last time the feasibility…the possibility…the practicality of Alexander’s ardent pitch. “If I took your suggestion & ordered the army to disperse how many do you suppose would get away?”
“Two thirds of us, I think would get away,” replied Alexander. “We would scatter like rabbits & partridges in the woods, & they could not scatter so to catch us.”

Lee’s response to Alexander would change the history of America.
“There are here only about 15,000 men with muskets. Suppose two thirds, say 10,000, got away. Divided among the states their numbers would be too insignificant to accomplish the least good. Yes! The surrender of this army is the end of the Confederacy. As for foreign help I’ve never believed we could gain our independence except by our own arms. If I ordered the men to Gen. Johnston few would go. Their homes have been overrun by the enemy & their families need them badly. We have now simply to look the fact in the face that the Confederacy has failed. And as Christian men, Gen. Alexander, you & I have no right to think for one moment of our personal feelings or affairs. We must consider only the effect which our action will have upon the country at large. Suppose I should take your suggestion & order the army to disperse & make their way to their homes. The men would have no rations & they would be under no discipline. They are already demoralized by four years of war. They would have to plunder & rob to procure subsistence. The country would be full of lawless bands in every part, & a state of society would ensure from which it would take the country years to recover. Then the enemy’s cavalry would pursue in the hopes of catching the principal officers, & wherever they went there would be fresh rapine & destruction.”

Porter Alexander would never forget the moment.

“Then I thought I had never half known before what a big heart & brain our general had. I was so ashamed of having proposed to him such a foolish and wild cat scheme as my suggestion had been that I felt like begging him to forget that he had ever heard it. And not only did my own little plan, of running away if ever I saw a white flag, vanish into thin air, but nothing could now have induced me to miss the opportunity of contributing by presence, example, & every means in my power to carrying out the general’s wishes in every respect. It seemed now an inestimable privilege to serve under him in the very last moment, & that no scene in the whole life of the Army of Northern Virginia would be more honorable than the one which was now about to close its record.”

Avoidance of a guerrilla war in the months and years and perhaps even decades after Appomattox prevented years of horror across our country, facilitated reunion, and steered the United States of America to its 20th century world leadership role that endures to this day. Indeed, avoidance of guerrilla wars after civil wars is almost unprecedented. And Lee’s act at Appomattox was instrumental in forming the reUnion we know and love today.

I have no interest in RELee’s character. It is his actions that I look at. There are the graves of Arlington of the men who fell for the Union, men who would have lived had he not taken up arms and armies against the United States of American.

He is a traitor who led the rebellion against the Constitutional federal government, a rebellion to ensure that four million black humans would forever be enslaved.

Not that anyone is going to read this but– Mr. Landrieu’s actions are political and he may even being positioning himself for higher office and this is a path to do so. Maybe he is doing it for the reasons he states and maybe its both. I am from the South (Alabama) and was raised on the greatness of Gen. Lee and others as were most of the people I grew up with. I went to college and graduated twice and my perspective has matured somewhat. While the Confederate government existed to protect the large plantations and the entire system that had been in existence before we were a country; there are some facts that the majority of people on both sides of the issue do not consider. The majority of soldiers in the Confederate army were conscripts or what we would consider drafted today. Yes, between April 1861 and April 1862 the Confederate government relied on volunteers to fill the ranks. But the volunteer ranks began to wain due to battlefield losses and general enthusiasm for the war as a whole. After the battle of Shiloh, the Confederate government passed the first Conscription Act, which did two very important things. First, it forced all white males into the Confederate army; a rather centralized act for a government bent on states rights. Secondly, if allowed the well to do plantation owners and their sons to skip service in the army. Read Sam Watkins’s book if you like, it’s a great read anyway. Now to the other side- The mayor and people that think like him have a drought of political ideas. The majority of sane people (north and south) could care less about the war and care more about who is going to win, Alabama or Ohio State, during a football game. However we Southerner’s, including myself, love a good fight. The battles that were fought are what intrigue us the most. Don’t believe it, the National Park Service realized this almost 20 years ago and started to institute new programming. Gen. Lee was a great man and a great commander and nothing will take away from that. It’s a free country and people can raise money for monuments of their choice or continue what they are doing and watch football and drink beer. (I have done both) As for treason, to my knowledge the only person hanged was the guy over Andersonville prison down in Georgia. Had President Davis, Gen. Lee or my favorite Captain Raphael Semmes or any others actually committed treason; why were there no trials and no mass executions. Read the history on that and while your at it read some Thomas Jefferson to find the answer. As far as the statues being removed– it is wrong but popular. Maybe we can have some statues of Al Sharpton or some of the black lives matter folks put up. Don’t worry– nobody is really watching and in a couple of months all of us, black and white, can get back to what matters to us really. Football

You have a lot of questions and there are settled answers:
1. Politicians do things because they are a mix of the right thing and the necessary thing. Black citizens are degraded by the presence of these unnecessary statues, and no white person is honored by treason.
2. Taking down the statues of white supremacy and of traitors is a good thing. We don’t honor Confederates because they tried to rip this country apart over slavery.
3. That you were raised on a false history of Lee is of no concern to anyone. While history is written by the victors, truth is written by the hand of God. These men who tried to create a white ethnostate with perpetual multigenerational chattel slavery were both wicked & wrong. That you didn’t learn this in your schools does not make this any less true.
3. The Confederate government didn’t exist to protect plantations and the system. It did so to more deeply establish and widely spread white supremacy as a specific government ethos, including the establishment and spread of white slavers and their black chattel slaves.
4. That soldiers were conscripted into doing evil may be an evil, but to dishonor their forced compliance by raising statues to the men who forced them into this service of evil is a deeper evil. I would think this is the strongest argument *against* the statues: these are the men that led them into death fighting for slavery, and did so by conscription and force. It’s like honoring the men who ran the prison camps and the labor camps because the workers were forced to work for Nazis.
5. The Confederacy was not about states rights, not at all. The Confederate “government” (unrecognized by anyone) took away states rights.
6. If the states don’t care about the Civil War, then removing the statues of the traitors is a good thing. One less useless item to dust.
7. General Lee led the rebellion that led to the slaughter of 500,000 men, including white and black men, and led to the death by famine of another 500-700,000, and led to the destruction of the Southern economy and the Southern infrastructure. He should be remembered as a destroyer and wrecker who was more concerned about his self-regard than the many, many lives who died because of his insistence upon supporting a slaver government. At every turn he could have chosen to avoid supporting the white slavers. He did not do so.
8. The trials and executions were not done for two reasons: Lincoln was murdered by a Southern sympathizer, and his successor, Andrew Johnson, was a weak fool who destroyed the work and dishonored the lives of all the Union loyalists by not persecuting the generals and leaders of the war, *everyone* which should have been tried, and if found guilty, hanged. The South would be far closer to racial healing if the consequences for racist actions and racist rebellion had been paid in full by the white supremacist leaders of the South.
9. It’s irrelevant whether we raise statues to other people, whether they are Al Sharpton, Cesar Chavez, or whatever your current bugaboo is. Stay focused — this is about honoring the traitors who tried to tear the United States of America apart in order to support and extend white supremacy and black chattel slavery.
10. If football is so important, then stay focused while the rest of us grind these statues into powder and cast them into the sea, to be dispersed and forgotten.